Figure 4.

The production of IL-6 and TNF were induced in a time-dependent fashion in C. trachomatis-(CT-) infected mouse J774 macrophages. J774 cells (10⁵ cells/mL/well) were seeded in 24-well plates. Twenty-four hours later, cells were infected with C. trachomatis EBs (10⁴ IFU/well) and cell-free cultured supernatants were collected at different time-points. The levels of IL-6 (a) and TNF (b) were measured in supernatants by cytokine-specific ELISA. For positive control, J774 cells (10⁶ cell/mL) were stimulated with LPS (1 μg/mL) (c) for various time-points. Asterisk indicates significant difference (P < 0.005), and P values were calculated by use of Student's t-test. Each bar represents the mean ± SD of samples run in duplicates. The data are representative of two separate experiments.