Longevity and Composition of Cellular Immune Responses Following Experimental Plasmodium falciparum Malaria Infection in Humans
Figure 4
Contribution of EM and CM cells to the total IFNγ response to PfRBC and PfSpz.
PBMC isolated from volunteers at various study time points were stimulated in vitro for 24 hours with PfRBC (A+B) or PfSpz (C) and stained for the memory marker CD45RO and the homing marker CD62L. Bars show the contributions of effector memory (EM, CD45RO+CD62L-), central memory (CM, CD45RO+CD62L+) and naive lymphocytes (CD45RO-) to the total percentage of IFNγ-producing cells over time. Height of bars represents median values for Group A (A+C) and Group B (B) volunteers for the different cell subsets. Donors with insufficient numbers of IFNγ responding cells to assess the relative contribution of cell subsets were excluded from this composition analysis. Numbers below the bars represent the number of donors included per time point. ND – not done: insufficient numbers to reliably assess group medians; this was similarly the case for anti-PfSpz responses in group B. Since only donors with sufficient numbers of responding cells to assess the relative contribution of lymphocyte subsets are represented, these distributions may appear biased towards patterns in relatively stronger responders.