Table 4.

Pulmonary TNF-α response of C57BL/6 mice infected intratracheally with M. tuberculosis WT, MGM1990, or MGM1991^a

Group	TNF-α production (pg/ml)
	rAg85A	Ag85A241-260	ESAT-61-20	Medium
WT	2,685 ± 167	742 ± 144	865 ± 118	325 ± 78
MGM1990	3,625 ± 218	2,951 ± 49*	2,733 ± 256*	3,722 ± 181*
MGM1991	1,757 ± 305	213 ± 112	64 ± 14*	<8
Naïve	671 ± 260	<8	<8	<8

^aMice were infected with 10⁴ CFU of M. tuberculosis WT, MGM1990, or MGM1991 by the intratracheal route. Lungs were recovered 3 weeks after the infection and homogenized, and pulmonary leukocytes were cultured with 5 μg/ml Ag85A, 10 μg/ml Ag85A_241-260, or 10 μg/ml ESAT-6_1-20 or in the absence of antigen (medium). Results are expressed as mean ± SD TNF-α levels for ELISAs performed in triplicate.

^*, P < 0.05 for MGM1990 or MGM1991 versus WT (Mann-Whitney test).