Fig. 3

Cellular immune responses in immunized rabbits. PBMCs isolated from the immunized rabbits at 49 days after the primary vaccination were stimulated with or without CSFV Shimen strain in triplicate. The T-lymphocyte proliferation was performed as described in Materials and Methods. The stimulation index a was obtained from dividing mean of the OD₄₅₀ values of the CSFV-stimulated wells by mean of the OD₄₅₀ values of CSFV-unstimulated wells. RNA of PBMCs was extracted and subjected to real-time RT-PCR after 72 h of incubation at 37 °C. Relative quantity of IL-4 mRNA expression (b) and IFN-γ mRNA expression (c) were determined using the expression of the GAPDH gene as the housekeeping gene. Data are shown as mean ± SEM, statistical differences between vaccination groups and PBS groups were measured by one-way ANOVA, indicated by asterisk. *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001