Figure 2.

Leishmania suppresses the Th2-associated cytokines IL-4, IL-6 and IL-13 following induction with LPS. Cells were incubated with LPS (100 ng/ml) followed by the addition of L. major, L. amazonensis or latex beads at a parasite/bead: host cell ratio of 20:1 (denoted by blue, green and open bars, respectively). At 2 hr, 8 hr and 19 hr timepoints, 200 μl of culture supernatant was removed, centrifuged and analysed for cytokine expression by Bio-Plex assay as described in Methods. Media only, L. major alone, L. amazonensis alone, latex beads alone and LPS alone (black, gray, purple, brown and red bars, respectively) were used as controls. Data represented are averages of two independent replicate experiments, with error bars as indicated.