FIG 3.

CD4⁺ and CD8⁺ T-cell Gag-specific responses. The percentages of subjects with Gag-specific CD4⁺ and CD8⁺ T-cell responses are shown. (A) The T-cell response was defined as the frequency of cells (>0.05% after background subtraction of the unstimulated condition) with detectable IFN-γ, TNF-α, and/or IL-2 intracellular cytokine production after stimulation of cryopreserved PBMCs with Gag overlapped peptides. (B) Total, central memory (CM; CD4⁺ CD45RA⁻ CD27⁺), and effector memory (EM; CD4⁺ CD45RA⁻ CD27⁻) Gag-specific CD4⁺ T-cell levels; (C) total, CM, EM, and terminally differentiated (TD; CD8⁺ CD45RA⁺ CD27⁻) Gag-specific CD8⁺ T-cell levels. Differences between unpaired groups were determined by the Mann-Whitney U and chi-square tests, and differences between paired samples were determined by the Wilcoxon signed-rank test. The Friedman test was not applied due to the small number of paired samples. Only significant differences are shown. *, P < 0.05; **, P < 0.001.