Figure 9.

Monocytes from patients with tuberculosis (TB) patients and healthy controls exhibit similar apoptosis-regulating signal kinase 1 (ASK1) and phospho-p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) levels in spite of exposure to high levels of serum tumour necrosis factor-α (TNF-α). Monocytes from TB patients or healthy controls were isolated from peripheral blood mononuclear cells by magnetic beads-labelled antibodies. (a) Western blot for ASK-1 and phospho-p38 MAPK of the supernatants of monocyte lysates after stimulation with medium alone or culture filtrate antigen extract (CFAE) from Mycobacterium tuberculosis H37Rv strain in the presence or absence of anti-Toll-like receptor 2 (TLR2) antibodies for 4 hr at 37°. Total protein was determined and glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH) was used as a loading control. (b, c) Band densities of ASK-1 and phospho-p38 MAPK in the Western blots were normalized against GAPDH by densitometry analysis. Results are shown in relative units of concentration using the imagej 1.39c software in samples from healthy controls (open bars) and TB patients (hatched bars). Each bar represents the mean ± SD of three independent experiments. (d) TNF-α concentration in sera from 41 healthy controls and 51 TB patients. The P-value of the difference between TB patients and healthy controls is shown.