Kinetics of circulating chemokines
The plasma measurements revealed distinctive expression patterns for the five chemokines (Figure 1). The Th2-associated chemokine CCL17 displayed significantly lower levels at 1 and 8 years of age, compared to at birth (Figure 1A). In contrast, the Th2-associated chemokine CCL22 revealed higher concentrations at age 8 compared to earlier in life (Figure 1B). For the Th2/Treg-associated chemokine CCL18 and the Th1-associated chemokine CXCL10, significantly higher levels were evident at 1 and 8 years of age compared to at birth (Figure 1C-D). However, the expression was significantly lower at age 8 than at age 1 for both chemokines. The Th1-associated chemokine CXCL11 showed significantly higher levels at age 8 compared to the earlier time points (Figure 1E).