Figure 2

Cytokine-induced increase in NK cell activity in M1a + M1b and M1c metastatic melanoma patients. a) Patients in M1c group have significantly (*p < 0.05, Mann–Whitney exact test) lower enhancement in NK cell cytotoxicity after in vitro treatment with combination of IL-12 and IL-18 compared to the increase in M1a + M1b group; b) Metastatic melanoma (MM) patients that have distant metastasis in liver have significantly (*p < 0.05, Mann–Whitney exact test) or high significantly (**p < 0.01, Mann–Whitney exact test) lower enhancement in NK cell cytotoxicity after in vitro treatment with IL-12 alone or in combination with IL-18 compared to the increase in NK cell cytotoxicity in MM patients with metastases in skin, subcutaneous layer and lymph nodes; c) MM patients with increased values of serum lactate dehydrogenase (LDH+) have significantly lower (*p < 0.05, Mann–Whitney exact test) upregulation of NK cell cytotoxicity after combined IL-12 and IL-18 in vitro treatment compared to patients with normal LDH values (LDH-). Results are expressed in indexes calculated as the value of NK cell cytotoxicity after the cytokine treatment of each MM patient devides with the value of NK cell cytotoxicity after treatment in medium alone. All results are shown as mean ± SE for maximum 36 MM patients.