Fig. 5

Effect of immunosuppressive therapies in patients on disease manifestations in mice. Relative amounts of various lymphocyte subsets in PBMC of SSc patients treated with or without immunosuppressive (IS) drugs. The percentages of CD3⁺, CD4⁺, and CD8⁺ T cells as well as of CD20⁺ B cells in freshly isolated PBMC were detected by FACS before transfer into recipient mice (A). Comparison of severity of inflammation in the lungs (B) and kidneys (C), human IgG (D), survival curves (E), and mortality rates (F) between mice that received PBMC from patients treated with immunosuppressive (IS) drugs and those that received PBMC from patients without IS drugs. p values for comparisons in A–D were calculated using the Mann U test, and those indicated in E and F were calculated using the log-rank (Mantel-Cox) test and Fisher’s exact test, respectively