Fig. 3.

Characterization of HBV specific T cell responses in cHBV patients with HBsAg loss and rapid decrease. PBMCs from chronic hepatitis B patients were stimulated with overlapping peptide pools covering the entire sequences of HBcAg or HBsAg for 10 days. Cells were analyzed for IFN-γ, TNF-α, and IL-2 production by intracellular cytokine staining. (a) Gating strategy of intracellular cytokine staining analysis. (b) HBcAg-specific T cell responses were compared between HBsAg retained patients (sAg-R) and HBsAg loss (sAg-L) patients. (c) Pairwise spearman correlations between 10 indicated phenotypical T cell markers in chronic hepatitis B patients (CHB) with HBsAg reduction, HBsAg, HBV DNA, ALT levels and HBcAg- and HBsAg- specific IFN-γ responses. colour intensities of squares indicate correlation coefficients according to the legends. Significant (P < 0·05) correlations are highlighted within squares. Data are presented as median and statistical analysis was performed by GraphPad Prism using Mann-Whitney test (b); Spearman's Rank correlation (c); *P < 0·05; **P < 0·01; ***P < 0·001; ns, not significant.