Fig. 4.

Impaired production of proinflammatory cytokines in the lungs of ficolin-deficient mice following A. fumigatus infection. WT and ficolin KO mice were intranasally inoculated with 2 × 10⁷ A. fumigatus conidia and sacrificed 24 h p.i. Control mice received PBS. a Lungs were removed and the expression of proinflammatory cytokines in lung homogenates was measured by qPCR; data represent means ± SEM as the fold increase over the control group (WT mock infected with PBS). b In separate experiments BALF was collected and cytokine concentrations in BALFs were measured by ELISA. The figures illustrate results from one experiment, representative of two independent experiments showing similar results, with n = 2 (PBS group) or n = 6 (A. fumigatus group) in each experiment. * p < 0.05 for ficolin KO to WT comparisons (unpaired two-tailed Student's t test).