Figure 5

Cytokine and chemokine gene expression profile of influenza-virus-infected human type II pneumocytes by quantitative RT-PCR. Cytokine and chemokine mRNA concentration were assayed 3 h and 6 h after infection with A/Hong Kong/483/97 (H5N1/97), A/Vietnam/1194/04, A/Vietnam/3046/04 (both H5N1/04) and A/Hong Kong 54/98 (H1N1) influenza viruses or in mock infected cells. H5N1/97 and both H5N1/04 influenza viruses induced significantly higher levels of IP-10, interferon-beta, RANTES and IL-6 when compared to H1N1 infected cells at 6 hours post-infection (p < 0.001, Bonferroni multiple comparison test). The mRNA concentrations of cytokine and chemokine mRNA were normalized to those β-actin mRNA in the corresponding samples. Means and standard deviation from experiments from five different donors are shown