Fig 1.

Strong HCV-specific IFN-γ ELISpot responses in seronegative aviremic Egyptian health care workers. PBMC were stimulated in triplicate with seven sets of pooled overlapping 15-mer HCV genotype 4a peptide antigens for ∼16 h as described in Materials and Methods. The 52 enrolled subjects were classified as responders to between one and seven pools and nonresponders. Fifteen healthy control subjects with no known exposure to HCV (unexposed controls) were used as a control group. For each subject, the total cumulative number of HCV-specific IFN-γ spot-forming cells (SFC) per 10⁶ PBMC, calculated by summing the reactivity to each of the seven antigenic pools after correcting for background, is shown. The crossed lines represent the mean and SEM.