FIGURES AND TABLES

Figure 1.

Characterization of peripheral blood subpopulations in control and primary antiphospholipid syndrome (PAPS) samples. (a) Cytokine production in peripheral T lymphocytes and monocytes in PAPS (n=3) and healthy controls (n=6). IFN- was measured in CD4+ T-lymphocytes. IL1, TNF and IL6 were measured in monocytes. Cytokine production was assessed by intracellular staining followed by flow cytometry. Results are expressed as the ratio between cytokine levels after stimulation relative to unstimulated cells. (b) Apoptosis percentage in freshly isolated peripheral blood mononuclear cells. Apoptosis was measured in freshly isolated peripheral blood mononuclear cells derived from patients with PAPS (n=6) and healthy controls (n=10) by propidium iodide staining followed by flow cytometry. Box-plot components are: box, interquartile range; horizontal line, median; whiskers, 1.5 interquartile range.

Figure 2.

Quantitative real time RT–PCR analysis in samples of primary antiphospholipid syndrome (PAPS), systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and thrombosis patients. Gene expression of NCF4, TLR8, CD14, CD163, PLSCR1, TNFSF13, STAT1, G1P2 and OAS2 were analyzed by quantitative RT–PCR in healthy controls (n=17), PAPS patients (n=7), SLE patients (n=12) and thrombosis patients (n=5). In each case, expression values are normalized to the expression of TATA-Box-Binding Protein, used as an internal control. Box-plot components are: box, interquartile range; horizontal line, median; whiskers, 1.5 interquartile range. Asterisk denotes statistically significant differences between PAPS and any of the other groups (P<0.05, one-way ANOVA simple contrast).

Table 1 - Laboratory parameters in the study cohorts.

Table 2 - Cell surface expression of markers that characterize a memory phenotype in PBMC-derived T lymphocytes of PAPS patients.