Fig. 5

Aβ-Teffs affect Treg frequency and function. a Frequency of CD4+CD25+FOXP3+ Tregs in blood, spleen and lymph nodes from n = 6 mice per group. Statistical differences were determined using one-way ANOVA followed by Newman–Keuls post hoc test. *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001, ****p < 0.0001. b Immunosuppressive function of Tregs assessed against proliferating CFSE-stained Tresps isolated from non-Tg mice. Tregs were isolated and pooled from within each group (n = 6 mice per group) and experiment was performed in triplicate. Linear regression analyses of Treg function from non-Tg mice showed r² = 0.28 and p = 0.07. All other APP/PS1 groups showed r² > 0.65 and p < 0.01. Although slops are not significantly different between different experimental groups, Th1 mice showed significantly different intercepts compared to non-Tg (p < 0.01) and APP/PS1 (p < 0.0001) mice. c Transcriptomic analyses for expression of innate and adaptive immune genes was performed using the RNA isolated from hippocampal tissues. Heat maps of fold changes in expression of genes compared to untreated or Aβ-Teff-treated APP/PS1 mice with non-Tg mice (left panel) and APP/PS1/Aβ-Th1 and APP/PS1/Aβ-Th17 mice compared to untreated APP/PS1 mice with significant p value provided in appropriate box (right panel). n = 4 mice per group analyzed using Qiagen RT²-PCR array. d, e Functional and pathway enrichment analysis of transcriptomic dataset was performed using KEGG, Reactome and STRING database. Different immune and inflammatory pathways affected in APP/PS1/Aβ-Th1 and APP/PS1/Aβ-Th17 mice were plotted as a bar chart in comparison to non-Tg (d) and untreated APP/PS1 mice (e). Significant pathways with p value passing Bonferroni-corrected significant level of 0.05 were plotted