mDC, but not pDC, from <i>S. haematobium</i>-infected subjects have impaired TLR responses.

<p>Isolated blood DC were stimulated with 100 ng/ml LPS (mDC), 1 µg/ml R848 (mDC & pDC) or 1 µg/ml CpG (pDC) for 40 h. (A–D) LPS- and R848-matured mDC and CpG and R848 stimulated pDC were analysed for maturation marker expression by FACS. Expression of surface marker is either shown (A+C) as fold increase relative to medium or (B+D) as absolute mean fluorescence intensity. (E) Cytokines levels in 40 h culture supernatants from TLR-stimulated DC were determined by multiplex Luminex. Values represent cytokines concentration from which medium control cytokines levels have been subtracted. (A+C) box plots represent 25–75 percentile range with error bars showing minimum to maximum. *, p<0,05; **, p<0,01; ***, p<0,001 for significant differences in fold increase in maturation marker expression relative to the medium-stimulated DC. (B, D and E) Bars represent mean + SD. Each group represents data from 20 donors, except for (E) in which R848-stimulated pDC cytokine data are represented by 4 and 5 donors for the infected and un-infected group, respectively. ND: not detectable.