Fig. 4

The total number of circulating fibrocytes is unaffected by the leukocyte isolation strategy used. a Total number of circulating fibrocytes (defined as CD45⁺lin⁻CD15⁻CXCR4⁺Col-1⁺ cells) per ml blood using two common leukocyte isolation techniques, e.g. the simple Pasteur pipette tube technique to isolate all white blood cells and Ficoll separation technique to isolate PBMCs. For this experiment we analyzed paired total white blood cells and PBMCs on the same day as blood withdrawal of 9 patients (4 IPF patients (black) and 5 PH patients (purple)) and 5 healthy controls (green). b Percentage of fibrocytes (of CD45⁺ cells) in the same patients after isolating all white blood cells (gray) and PBMCs (black). Data are depicted as median and interquartile