Figure 3.

Pregnancy levels of estradiol suppressed pulmonary pro-inflammatory responses to H5N1 infection. (A) Quantitative RT-PCR of pulmonary gene expression of mice implanted with estradiol or placebo pellets on Day 1 post infection (p.i.) with H5N1 virus. The average fold changes of individual genes vs. placebo group are presented in the correlation scatter plot with the dash lines indicating 2-fold change (n = 4 mice/group). (B) Radar chart of pulmonary cytokines on Day 3 p.i. (fold inductions vs. placebos, n = 7 mice/cytokine/group). *p < 0.05 and *** p  <  0.001 compared to placebo by unpaired Student’s t-test, respectively. Data are representative of 2–3 independent experiments with similar results.