Fig. 1

Immune-suppressive effect of asbestos exposure. The illustration shows that asbestos exposure has the potential to impair the differentiation of CTLs with suppressed proliferation of CD8⁺T cells. As demonstrated by our study, asbestos exposure results in lower cytotoxicity for allogenic targets in PBMCs exposed to CB, but not CR, compared with non-exposed PBMCs during the MLR. In particular, exposure to CB during the MLR suppressed the increase in granzyme B⁺ and IFN-γ⁺ cells. CB exposure also suppressed the increase in CD45RO⁺ effector/memory and CD25⁺-activated cells in CD8⁺ lymphocytes, and the decrease in CD45RA⁺ cells. Moreover, the production of IFN-γ and TNF-α decreased in the presence of CB