Kinetics of splenic T-cell responsiveness and the major presence of cell populations in the spleen after CTX treatment.

Female Balb/c mice were injected i.p. with CTX (100 mg/kg of body weight) or PBS 3 times every 72 hours. At days 3, 6, 10, and 20 after CTX delivery, SC were aseptically obtained and assayed for T-cell proliferation with Con A (1μg/mL) or anti-CD3 (2 μg/mL) plus IL-2 (50 units/mL) as previously described. Data are the percentage of proliferation over mitogen-stimulated SC control cultures (A) to account for differences in proliferative response of these cells in different days of the experiment. From the very same spleens, CD19⁺ B cells, αβTcR⁺ T cells, and CD11b⁺ macrophage/myeloid cells were analyzed by flow cytometry as described (B). In this figure, the absolute number of each population is represented by the height of each stacked bar. The data are the means of positive cells of PBS-injected control (2 mice/d) and CTX-injected animals (3 mice/d). SD deviations were <10% in all cases.