Fig. 5.

CD96^low Th9 cells have a high inflammatory and colitogenic potential. (A–H) C57BL/6 Rag1^−/− mice received no cells (w/o, n = 5), 1 × 10⁵ CD96^high (n = 3–7), or CD96^low (n = 4–10) Th9 cells sorted from in vitro differentiated alloreactive C57BL/6 cocultures and were grafted with BALB/c skin on the next day. Samples were collected between day 9 and 15 posttransplantation. Due to a sample collection error, colonic specimens could only be analyzed from three to four animals of three independent experiments. (A) Body weight of mice shown as mean ± SEM (CD96^high, n = 7; CD96^low, n = 10). P value of the interaction term (group with time) was calculated using an ANOVA type III test after fitting a linear mixed-effect model to the data. (B) Representative hematoxylin and eosin stained sections of ileum (Upper row) and skin graft (Lower row) harvested 9 to 13 d posttransplantation. Magnifications display the epidermis composed of stratum corneum (SC), stratum granulosum (SG), stratum spinosum (SS), stratum basale (SB) and part of the dermis (D). (Scale bar: 100 µm.) (C) Skin graft inflammation score with median. P value was calculated by Kruskal–Wallis test and Dunn’s test. (D) Villus height-to-crypt depth ratio in ileal mucosa with median. Kruskal–Wallis test was applied. (E) Number of CD3⁺ cells per 10 high power fields (hpfs) in immunohistochemically stained ileum sections. (E–G) Median is depicted, and one-tailed Mann–Whitney test was applied. (F) Colon inflammation score. (G) Number of eosinophils per 10 high power fields (hpfs) in immunohistochemically stained colon sections. (H) Absolute number of T cells isolated from graft draining lymph nodes (d LN), mesenteric lymph nodes (mes LN), and spleen of n = 7 (CD96^high) or n = 10 (CD96^low) mice. P values were determined by Mann–Whitney test. n.s., not significant (P > 0.05).