Fig. 1

Differential effects of prednisone with or without IL-2 supplementation on Treg subsets and disease improvement in SLE patients. a Shows the percentages of CD25^highCD127^low Treg before and after 2 weeks of treatment. b Treg were gated as CD25^highCD127^low in CD4⁺ T cells. Treg subsets were defined based on the expression of CD45RA and CD25: CD45RA^-CD25⁺⁺⁺ active Treg, CD45RA⁺CD25⁺⁺ resting Treg. c, d Show the percentages of active Treg and resting Treg before and after 2 weeks of treatment. e Shows the expression of CD25 before and after 2 weeks of treatment. f Shows the reduced Treg levels in patients treated with prednisone alone were rescued by the addition of low-dose IL-2. g, h Show that IL-2 restored prednisolone-induced decrease on expression of (g) Foxp3 and (h) pSTAT5 in vitro. j The percentages of patients with decreased SLEDAI and increased C3 and C4 was compared between prednisone and prednisone+IL-2. i SLEDAI score, levels of (k) C3 and (l) C4 of SLE patients before and after 2 week treatment with prednisone with/without IL-2 are shown