Functional biomarker signatures of circulating T-cells and its association with distinct clinical status of leprosy patients and their respective household contacts

摘要

Frequency of cytokine+ cells in Leprosy patients, Household Contacts and Healthy Controls upon in vitro non-stimulated culture. The frequency (‰) of cytokine+ cells (IFN-γ, IL-4 and IL-10) amongst gated lymphocyte subsets including: T-cells, CD4+ T-cells and CD8+ T-cells were calculated upon in vitro culture in the absence of exogenous stimuli (non-stimulated culture). The results are presented in boxplot format, indicating the median values (min–max) and the outliers underscored by dots, based on Tuckey analysis for Healthy Controls = ; Leprosy patients = ; HHC(PB) = —Household Contacts of Paucibacillary Leprosy patients; HHC(MB) = —Household Contacts of Multibacillary Leprosy patients; L(PB) = —Paucibacillary Leprosy patients; L(MB) = —Multibacillary Leprosy patients. Multiple comparisons amongst groups were carried out by Kruskal–Wallis test followed by Dunn’s post-test for sequential pairwise comparisons. Additionally, Man-Whitney Test were also employed for pairwise comparative analysis. Significant differences, using the above-mentioned statistical methods are underscored by * for differences at P < 0.05 and ** for differences at P < 0.01