Figure 4.

TCDD-treated DCs altered the expression of IFN-γ, IL-17, T-bet, and RORγt in naïve CD4⁺ T cells. DCs were cocultured with PBC patients or HC naïve CD4⁺ T cells for 3 days. (a) Naïve CD4⁺ T cells surface markers were detected by FACS and the proportion of CD4⁺ CD45RA⁺ naïve CD4⁺ T cells reached 97.8%. (b) CCK-8 detected the naïve CD4⁺ T cell proliferation differences between different groups. (c)After coculture, the expressions of IFN-γ, IL-17, T-bet, and RORγt of the PBC DC+PBC T cell group were higher than those of the HC DC+HC T cell group in RNA level. (d) Then, AhR-activated DCs altered the expression of T-bet and RORγt in naïve CD4⁺ T cells at protein levels using ELSA kit. Data are expressed as mean ± SEM. ^∗Significantly higher than control, p < 0.05 (^∗p < 0.05, ^∗∗p < 0.01, and ^∗∗∗p < 0.001).