Fig. 2

Post-treatment reduction in Hp detected by Western blot and immunoturbidimetry. A Densitometry values for Hp from Western Blot with α-chains measured separately. Each gel was run with the same reference “QC” sample from a healthy adult with 1.4 g/L Hp measured at Clinical Chemistry unit by immunoturbidimetry as well as JIA patient higher and lower JADAS27 samples run in parallel on same gel. For each resulting membrane, patient bands were normalized against the reference QC sample. That is, a patient α2 band with same densitometry value as reference QC would have a normalized α2 value of 1.0 (controls n = 39, higher and lower JADAS27 pairs n = 65 from JIA patients, unpaired statistics) B Densitometry values for sum α1 + α2 combined (controls n = 39, patients n = 65, JADAS27 < 1 (remission) n = 30, unpaired statistics) corresponding to total Hp measured by immunoturbidity at Clinical Chemistry unit. C Hp concentrations for same JIA patients measured by immunoturbidity at Clinical Chemistry unit. Dashed line indicates 1.8 g/L upper cutoff of reference range for 12–17 year olds (unpaired statistics). D Ratio of Hp values Lower/Higher Hp and significances of pairwise comparisons. E Clinical chemistry unit Hp concentrations by immunoturbidimetry normalized against total protein determination by Bradford method. This was done so as to compare to Western blot method, which loads lanes according to protein concentration. Statistical symbols are * p > 0.05 and ** p < 0.001 and describe higher vs. lower JADAS27 comparisons. JIA patients had higher Hp than healthy controls across all comparisons (p < 0.001). Significance symbols were not added for this type of comparison to avoid redundancy