Figure 5From: Impaired macrophage phagocytosis of bacteria in severe asthmaEffect of dexamethasone on phagocytosis by MDM. MDM from normal subjects (●, n = 14), non-severe asthmatics (■, n = 14) and severe asthmatics (▲, n = 14) were pre-treated with dexamethasone for 1 h prior to exposure to fluorescently-labelled beads (Panel A), H. influenzae (Panel B) or S.aureus (Panel C) for 4 h. Phagocytosis was measured by fluorimetry and presented as mean ± SEM. A Mann-Whitney test was used to compare the effect of given concentration of dexamethasone with that of untreated samples. **p < 0.01 and ***p < 0.001 compared to untreated cells.Back to article page