FIG. 3.

HCV-specific CTL activity from HLA-A2-positive HCV patients stimulated with peptide pools, including the following: subjects with spontaneous recovery, contacts with persistent aviremia but detectable immune responses, subjects with chronic evolution, and noninfected subjects with no detectable HCV-specific immune responses. At the baseline (A) no CTL responses were detected in any index patients or contacts. At week 12 (B) and at the end of follow-up (C) HCV-specific CTL responses are more vigorous in subjects with spontaneous recovery and persistent aviremia than in those with evolution to chronic disease. Each bar represents the mean response to a given peptide pool. The details of the peptide pools are given in Materials and Methods. The vertical line represents the cutoff for each response.