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HIV-Infected Spleens Present Altered Follicular Helper T Cell (Tfh) Subsets and Skewed B Cell Maturation

Fig 1

Tfh cell subsets, including Tfr, are present in greater proportions in HIV⁺ spleens.

(A) Splenocytes were stained for T helper cell markers and analyzed by flow cytometry: according to the expression of CD45RA and CCR7, CD4 T cells were subdivided into CD45RA⁺CCR7⁺ naïve, CD45RA^-CCR7^- effector memory (TEM), CD45RA⁺CCR7^- terminally differentiated effector memory (TEMRA) and CD45RA^-CCR7⁺ central memory (TCM) T cells. Regulatory T (Treg) cells were identified as CD4⁺ CD45RA^- Foxp3⁺ CD25⁺. HIV^-ITP^- n = 8, HIV⁺ITP^- n = 4, HIV^-ITP⁺ n = 3 and HIV⁺ITP⁺ n = 9. (B) Tfh cells were identified as CD3⁺ CD4⁺ CD45RA^- CCR7^- CXCR5⁺, GCTfh are the CD57⁺ subset of Tfh, and Tfr are Foxp3⁺ Tfh cells (S1 Fig). The frequency of Tfh, GCTfh and Tfr cells is represented as the percentage of total memory CD4⁺ T cells. HIV^-ITP^- n = 8, HIV⁺ITP^- n = 4, HIV^-ITP⁺ n = 3 and HIV⁺ITP⁺ n = 9. Frequency of Treg and Foxp3⁺ Tfh (Tfr) were identified for HIV^-ITP^- n = 4, HIV^-ITP⁺ n = 3, HIV⁺ITP^- n = 3 and HIV⁺ITP⁺ n = 4. Statistics were obtained using the non parametric Mann-Whitney test *p<0.05, **p<0.005, ***p<0.001.

doi: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0140978.g001