Fig. 1

Cytokine responses of PBMCs after in vitro stimulation with FCWAs and/or LPS. PBMCs (1 × 10⁶ cells/ml) were isolated from venous blood of patients with sarcoidosis (n = 22) and healthy subjects (n = 20) and incubated with medium alone or stimulated with FCWAs (200 μg/ml) and/or LPS (10 ng/ml). Supernatant TNF-α (pg/ml) (a) after 4 h of incubation, IL-6 (pg/ml) (b), IL-10 (pg/ml) (c) and IL-12 (pg/ml) (d) after 18 h of incubation were measured by ELISA. The results are presented as the mean cytokine concentration in culture supernatants with SEM. *p < 0.05, **p < 0.001: significantly different cytokine production between patients with sarcoidosis and healthy subjects. LPS: lipopolysaccharide, BGS: soluble (1 → 3)-β D-glucan, BGP: particulate (1 → 3)-β-D-glucan, ZYM: zymosan, and CHT: chitosan