Figure 5
Lactobacilli-mediated changes in inflammatory cytokine production by CaSki cells in response to Gardnerella vaginalis. Cytokine production by CaSki cells in response to G. vaginalis alone and G. vaginalis following pre-incubation with lactobacilli. CaSki monolayers in 24 well plates were incubated with lactobacilli for 5 hours at 37 °C under 5% CO2. G. vaginalis was then added to the cultures and incubated as above for a further 20 hours. Cytokine concentrations were measured using Luminex. Unsupervised hierarchical clustering was used to group the co-cultures according to inflammatory responses induced. Inflammatory cytokine concentrations are shown as a heat map, with blue, through white, to red indicating low-high cytokine concentrations, respectively. Data was log10-transformed and scaled in R. Two clustering dendrograms are shown in the figure. The dendrogram above the heat map illustrates degrees of relatedness between different cytokines measured. The dendrogram on the left hand side of the heat map indicates relationships between the expression profiles of the analysed cytokines in response to different clinical Lactobacillus isolates. GV: G. vaginalis; LC: L. crispatus, LJ: L. jensenii; LM: L. mucosae; LG: L. gasseri; LV: L. vaginalis.
