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. 2013 Dec 5;8(12):e82717. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0082717

Figure 2. Activation status of HESNs is variable comparing mucosa, versus PBMCs.

Figure 2

The box and whisker plots show the median value and 10-90 percentiles of mRNA RU of anti-inflammatory IL-10, TGB-β and pro-inflammatory cytokines TNF-α and IL-1β in vaginal mucosa (A), genital mucosa (vaginal and endocervical mucosa, together) (B), oral mucosa (C) and in PBMCs (D) of HESNs (blue), HCs (green) and SPs (red). A non-parametric test (Mann-Whitney U-two-tailed test) was used to compare mRNA RU between study groups. Outliers are plotted as black circles and Bonferroni adjusted significant p values are displayed in each graph. Significantly lower mRNA RU of TNF-α in vaginal, genital and oral mucosa of HESNs than SPs (A-C) and significantly higher mRNA RU of IL-10 in vaginal mucosa (A) and PBMCs (D) of HESNs than HCs are shown. In contrast, the PBMCs of HESNs showed higher levels of the proinflammatory cytokines TNF-α and IL-1β (D).