FIGURE 4.

Effects of bacterial exposure on monocyte-derived macrophage (MDM) apoptosis gene expression. MDMs from five COPD patients were exposed to Haemophilus influenzae (HI), Moraxella catarrhalis (MC) or Streptococcus pneumoniae (SP) at a multiplicity of infection of 5:1 or left unexposed (control) for 4, 24 or 72 h. mRNA expression levels of anti-apoptosis genes a) MCL-1 and b) BCL-2 and pro-apoptosis genes c) BAX and d) BAK1 were measured by reverse transcriptase PCR (RT-qPCR). Data presented as mean+sem. Quantitative RT-qPCR data expression relative to endogenous control (2^−ΔΔC_t). *^,**^,***: significantly different compared to unexposed control (p<0.05, 0.01, 0.001, respectively).