Figure 5

Absolute numbers of lymph node CD4 ⁺ cells and Th17 cells after estrogen treatment in early collagen-induced arthritis. DBA/1 mice were ovariectomized, subjected to collagen-induced arthritis (CIA) and treated with 17β-estradiol (E2; 0.83 μg/day) or placebo. (A,B) Absolute number of T helper 17 (Th17) cells (A) and CD4⁺ cells (B) in one subiliac lymph node (LN) of CIA mice (day 14, n = 10 or 11 mice/group), obtained by multiplying cell population frequencies obtained by fluorescence-activated cell sorting by total LN cellularity. To improve normal distribution of data, some data were log-transformed prior to statistical analysis (A). Arithmetic mean ± SEM is shown in all graphs. Student’s t-test (B) or Welch’s t-test (A) was used (*P <0.05).