Cell composition of menstrual blood cells (MBCs).

<p>The percentage of various cell types present in menstrual blood versus PBMC were resolved by staining with cell type-specific surface markers. <b>A.</b> The total lymphocytes, were determined by the percentage of cells within a lymphocyte gate (small cells from FSC vs SSC plots) and monocytes (N = 8), are CD14+ cell from a leuokocyte gate (all cells within the larger FSC vs SSC plot), refer to <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0028894#pone-0028894-g001" target="_blank">Figure 1</a>. <b>B.</b> Lymphocyte subsets present in menstrual versus peripheral blood. From the live cell gate, B cells were gated on CD19, T cells were gated on CD3 and T cell subsets were further divided into CD4+CD3+ and CD8+CD3+ T cells. <b>C.</b> Natural killer cell subsets (N = 8) gated from CD3- cells. CD16+CD56+ (cytotoxic NK cells) and CD16-CD56+ (immunoregulatory NK cells). The median is shown for data from 12 healthy women, except for monocytes and NK cells, where 8 samples were analyzed. Statistically significant differences (p<0.05) were obtained using Wilcoxon Signed Rank test.