Immunological changes in different patient populations with chronic hepatitis C virus infection

Figure 4 Activating and inhibitory natural killer cell receptor expression by CD8+ T cells in the peripheral blood from patients with chronic hepatitis C virus with elevated alanine aminotransferase or persistently normal alanine aminotransferase and in healthy individuals. The expression of CD160 (A), NKG2D (B), NKG2C (C), KIR2DL3 (D) and ILT-2 (E) by CD8+ T cells in the peripheral blood from patients with chronic HCV with elevated ALT or PNALT and in healthy individuals. The solid bars represent medians; the boxes indicate the interquartile ranges and the lines show the most extreme observations. Differences were considered statistically significant for P values ≤ 0.05. HCV: Hepatitis C virus; ALT: Alanine aminotransferase; PNALT: Persistently normal ALT; NK: Natural killer cell.