Fig. 3: Female and male mice have different immune responses to UTI.

The innate immune response to female mice (top) is characterized by robust cytokine expression and immune cell infiltration, which is notably absent in male mice (bottom, transparent immune cells and missing cytokines). The events depicted inside the dotted box have been observed in the context of UTI in female mice, however, it is unknown whether these events unfold in male mice with UTI. For example, both sexes have two subtypes of resident macrophages, however, whether they behave similarly in defense against infection is unknown. Notably, both sexes mount a non-sterilizing adaptive immune response to infection, although whether this response is mediated by similar mechanisms in female and male mice is unclear. Figure drawn in BioRender with data from ref. ⁵⁰ and Rousseau et al., BioRxiv, https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.10.28.466224v1.