Gut mucosa of paediatric patients with IBD has an increased frequencies of enterocytes producing TNF-α and expressing HLA Class I molecules.

Enterocytes (EpCam positive cells) that spontaneously produced TNF-α and expressed HLA Class I were evaluated in intestinal biopsies from young subjects with Crohn’s disease (CD), ulcerative colitis (UC), and non-IBD healthy controls (HC). Cells were collected and stained as described in Fig 1. Overall percentage and representative dot plots of EpCam and TNF-α (A and B),and of EpCam and HLA-Class I (C and D) double positive cells in pooled intestinal biopsies from each group are shown. Horizontal bars are the median values. The Mann-Whitney U test was applied to evaluate statistical significant differences.