Fig. 5: Phenotype and activation status of leukocyte populations present in the sigmoid colon before and after exposure to seminal plasma.

Lamina propria mononuclear cells isolated from six different donors were incubated 2 h with medium, 25% NSP or 25% LSP, washed, and immunophenotyped 72 h later. a The graph shows the proportion of naive, central memory (CM), effector memory (EM), and effector memory RA (TEMRA) cells among colonic CD3⁺CD4⁺ and CD3⁺CD8⁺ T cells. Each symbol represents one animal and the mean ± SD is shown. b–g Expression of the activation markers HLA-DR (b, e), CD69 (c, f) and highly activated CD38⁺HLA-DR⁺CD69⁺ cells (d, g) by CD3⁺CD4⁺ (b–d) and CD3⁺CD8⁺ T cells (e–g) from the colon. Each symbol represents one animal. p < 0.05 denotes significant difference between conditions (Friedman tests with post hoc Benjamini, Krieger, and Yekutieli tests).