Fig. 8

Ex vivo co-culture of heat-killed gut microbiota from N7 and N11 groups with naive PBMCs resulted in significantly different levels of immune activation markers on T cells. The supernatant of heat-killed gut microbiota from each animal of the N7 and N11 groups were co-cultured with naive PBMC for 48 h as described in Materials and methods section. Cells were harvested and the frequencies of immune activated markers Ki67⁺, CCR5⁺, Ki67⁺, CD38⁺, CD69⁺, and HLA-DR⁺ on CD4⁺ (a–f) and CD8⁺ (g–l) T cells were evaluated using flow cytometry. CD69 on CD4⁺ T cells, which peaks earlier, showed *P = 0.02 for N7 > N11 at 18 h after treatment. Means ± SEM are shown, and the comparisons between N7 and N11 groups were analyzed using Mann-Whitney tests