Figure 2.

The population of functional Treg cells correlates with hypercholesterolemia. (A) Splenic FoxP3+ Treg cell populations among live CD4+ T cells following 4 weeks of cholesterol-free (white) standard chow diet (SCD), 0.15% (gray) or 1.125% (black) cholesterol-containing Western diet (WD) in wild type mice. One-way ANOVA with Bonferroni’s multiple comparison post hoc test was performed for statistical analysis. (B) Splenic FoxP3+ Treg cell populations as in (A) against plasma cholesterol concentrations; r = Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient. (C) Splenic FoxP3+ Treg cell populations among live CD4+ T cells in wild type (Ldlr +/+, circles) and LDL receptor knockout (Ldlr−/−, triangles) mice fed SCD (white) or 0.15% cholesterol-containing WD (gray) for 4 weeks. One-way ANOVA with Bonferroni’s multiple comparison post hoc test was performed for statistical analysis. (D) Splenic FoxP3+ Treg cell populations among live CD4+ T cells in Ldlr−/− mice fed SCD or WD for 12 and 24 weeks, respectively. One-way ANOVA with Bonferroni’s multiple comparison post hoc test was performed for statistical analysis. (E) Suppression of CD4+ responder T cell proliferation by CD4+ CD25+ suppressor T cells isolated from mice treated as in (A); CFSE-labeled responder T cells and irradiated APCs are derived from SCD fed mice; maximum suppression was set to 100%. Representative data from one out of two experiments with three technical replicates per condition are shown. Two-way ANOVA with Bonferroni’s multiple comparison post hoc test was performed for statistical analysis, displayed p-value indicates the significant effect of the diet on the suppressive capacity. (The p-value for the effect of the dilution of suppressor cells is not shown). All values are expressed as mean ± SEM; color and shape of data points indicate treatment and genotype of mice, as described in the legend; *p < 0.05; ***p < 0.001.