Figure 2

HIV-1∆Vpr produces less proinflammatory IL-1β, IL-8 and TNF-α in MDMs than HIV-1 ^wt . MDMs were infected with HIV-1^wt or HIV-1∆Vpr virus at an MOI of 0.1 or left untreated for 1, 2, 3, 4, 8, 12, 16 and 20 days. (a) Expression of IL-1β, IL-8 and TNF-α in protein levels in supernatants of HIV-1^wt, HIV-1∆Vpr and mock-infected (NT) MDMs collected at indicated time points was monitored by ELISA (N = 6). Absence of Vpr reduced the production of proinflammatory cytokines. The results presented are the mean concentration of cytokines ± SEM. *P < 0.05 (two tailed student’s t-test) compared to HIV-1∆Vpr-infected cultures. (b) qRT-PCR was carried out with the cell lysates as mentioned in Methods (N = 6). RNA fold changes were compared with ELISA data for each individual experiment. The expression of cytokines in protein levels (HIV-1^wt; red lines and HIV-1∆Vpr; blue lines) was correlated with the respective RNA transcripts (fold changes in HIV-1^wt compared to HIV-1∆Vpr; green lines). Figure represents one of six independent experiments.