Research Paper Volume 12, Issue 21 pp 21147—21160
Melatonin exerts immunoregulatory effects by balancing peripheral effector and regulatory T helper cells in myasthenia gravis
Figure 1. Serum melatonin levels and melatonin receptor expression in MG patients and HCs. (A) Serum melatonin levels among different MG subgroups (HC, n=31; MG, n=43; OMG, n=19; GMG, n=24; NIST-MG, n=14; IST-MG, n=29; MG normal, n=17; MG hyperplasia, n=15; MG thymoma, n=11). (B) Western blot analysis of MT1 and RORα expression in PBMCs from HCs and MG patients with different QMGS. The results are representative of three independent experiments. (C) Statistical analysis of MT1/β-Actin and RORα/β-Actin in different MG patients and HCs (HC, n=8; MG, n=13). (D) Relative expression of MT1 and RORα (HC, n=11; MG, n=35). The results are representative of three independent experiments. (E) FCM analysis of RORα expression in CD4+ T cells from HCs and MG patients. (F) Statistical analysis of RORα expression in CD4+ T cells (HC, n=6; MG, n=14). The data are presented as the mean ± SD. * P ≤ 0.05, ** P≤ 0.01 and ns=no significance.