Fig. 3

Butyrate treatment regulates the energy metabolism of Tregs in patients with AChR MG. Naive CD4⁺ T cells sorted from patients with AChR MG were cultured under Treg-polarizing conditions with or without 200 μM butyrate. (A) Mitochondrial oxygen consumption rate (mitoOCR) and (D) glycolytic proton efflux rate (glycoPER) were measured using a Seahorse XFe24 analyzer after 3 days of cell culture. Quantification of (B) basal OCR (t = 6.848, p = 0.0002 with unpaired t-test), (C) maximal OCR (t = 10.74, p = 0.0081 with unpaired t-test), (E) basal glycolysis (t = 2.826, p = 0.0223 with unpaired t-test), and (F) basal ratio of mitoOCR to glycoPER (t = 7.678, p = 0.0079 with unpaired t-test). (G) Protein expression of HIF-1α was detected by Western blot. Each dot represents an individual sample. Data are shown as the mean ± SD, * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001, ns = not significant