Figure 5

Cytokine secretion of stimulated splenocytes and peritoneal macrophages from germfree versus conventionally housed mice. Spiderplots show (a) IL-10, (b) IL-22 and (c) TNF-α release from splenocytes of germfree mice (inner purple lines) upon stimulation with different stimuli compared to splenocytes of conventional mice (outer pink lines). Spiderplots show (d) IL-6 and (e) TNF-α release of peritoneal macrophages of germfree mice (inner purple lines) upon stimulation, compared to conventional mice (outer pink lines). Cytokine concentrations in response to the stimuli are normalized to the cytokine concentrations of splenocytes of germfree mice (inner grey lines), averaged per group and plotted on a log scale. See legend to Fig. 1 for more information. Values are means ± SEM; Groups were compared using Mann–Whitney U test; n = 4–9; *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001.