Fig. 3

The cytokine profiler array was used to measure relative intensities of cytokines (Proteome Profiler Array, Human XL Cytokine Array Kit, R&D Systems) at three time points: day 10 (before immunotherapy), day 28 (after steroid pulse therapy and 5 sessions of plasmapheresis), and day 42 (after the other 5 sessions of plasmapheresis). The relative intensity was determined by the ratio of intensity of each cytokine to the average intensity of three internal references. For example, the BAFF intensity was 1.115-fold of the mean intensities of references at day 10. The dividing lines in each unit figure represented 0.4-, 0.8-, 1.2-fold intensities to references