CagA+ H pylori infection is associated with polarization of T helper cell immune responses in gastric carcinogenesis

Figure 4 Local immunity responses in patients with CagA+ (A) , CagA- H pylori (B) infection and those without H pylori infection (C) as determined by immunohistochemistry. Numbers of IFN-γ and IL-4 positive cells from 200 polymorphonuclear cells (PMNs) and mononuclear cells (MNCs) were counted from five randomly chosen fields and averaged. The positive rate was used to grade the expression levels: negative: 0%; +: 1%-25%; ++ 26%-50%; +++, 51%-100%. A: IFN-γ expression with “+++” predominates in chronic gastritis (CG), while IFN-γ expression with “+” becomes the majority when the disease develops to gastric cancer (GC). On the contrary, IL-4 expression with “+” decreases gradually when the disease develops from CG to GC, but the rate of IL-4 expression with “+++” increases gradually following the progression; B: Following the progression of gastric lesions, there was no difference of IFN-γ and IL-4 expression in that the former was always with “++”, while the latter was always with “+” in all the groups; C: Following the progression of gastric lesions, IFN-γ expression with “++” were at all dominant, while IL-4 expression with “+” was in the main in all the groups.