Figure 3.

Boosting with LP-ESAT-6 subunit vaccine in BCG-primed mice leads to enhanced recruitment of immune cells in bronchoalveolar lavage fluids. Female BALB/c mice (n = 5/group) were immunized according to the pre-exposure or post-exposure schedule shown in Figure 1. Four weeks after infection, mice were euthanized and lung lavages were collected from (A) pre-exposure boost and (B) post-exposure boost groups to examine the presence and activation (CD69⁺) of CD3⁺CD4⁺ (I), CD3⁺CD8⁺ (II) and CD3⁺CD4⁻CD8⁻ (DN) T cells (III) by flow cytometry. The gating strategy shown above the bar graphs in (I) was used to detect the different subsets of T cell based on the expression of CD3, CD4, CD8 and CD69 markers by flow cytometry analysis. Mean ± standard deviations of percent positive cells from five individual mice are shown. ^*Indicates significant difference (^*P < 0.05) between the compared groups and “NS” represents not significant (P > 0.05). Data are representative of two different repeated experiments.