Fig. 6

Activation status of leukocytes in enzyme- and DTT-liquefied sputum samples. Expression levels (MFI) of CD11b, HLA-DR and CD63 in sputum-resident mature neutrophils (A, n = 20), eosinophils (B, n = 10) and total lymphocytes (C, n = 15) after processing sputum samples with PBS (black), the traditional DTT procedure (blue) and the proposed enzymatic method (red). Horizontal bars represent the median and error bars the 25th-75th percentiles. p-values were yielded by a Kruskall-Wallis test. n.s.; non-significant