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. 2004 Jul 1;114(1):39–48. doi: 10.1172/JCI20645

Figure 4.

Figure 4

Systemic immune activation by CD40 ligation is unaffected by progesterone administration. Mice were sacrificed on E8 after daily treatment on E4–7 with rat IgG or FGK45 plus either concurrent progesterone injection (which produced no abortion with either rat IgG or FGK45) or concurrent sesame seed oil vehicle injection (which produced abortion with FGK45 only). (A) Elevated splenocyte numbers following FGK45 treatment in both groups. *P < 0.005. Data represent mean ± SD for three to four mice per group. (B–D) Three-color flow cytometric analysis of splenocytes to determine cell size and surface activation marker expression. In all panels, shaded histograms show data from rat IgG–treated mice, while open histograms show data from FGK45-treated mice. Data represent three mice per group. (B and C) Lymphocyte activation. Increased forward scatter (FSC), indicating increased cell size (B), and increased CD69 expression, indicating cell activation (C), were seen in B cells, NK cells, and a fraction of T cells following FGK45 treatment in both groups. (D) Dendritic cell activation. Increased CD80, CD86, and MHC class II expression, indicating cell activation, was seen on splenic CD11c+ cells following FGK45 treatment in both groups.