<p>Decidual fibroblasts were kept uninfected or infected for 48 h with HCMV. dNK cell cytotoxicity was determined by <sup>51</sup>Cr-release assay after 18 hours of contact at different E/T ratios. (A) Fibroblasts were infected with VHLE clinical isolate (n = 3), (B) cells infected with AD169 laboratory strain of HCMV (n = 5). (C) Analysis of dNK cell cytotoxicity from a cohort of 10 <i>decidua</i> samples at the 50 to 1 ratio. (D) dNK cells were pre-incubated with anti-FasL or (E) anti-TRAIL blocking mAbs at the final concentration of 10 µg/ml for 20 min and cytotoxicity was monitored after 18 h. Control (CTRL), lysis performed in the presence of IgG control. Each data point is calculated as the mean lysis ± S.D. from at least five independent experiments done in replicate tissue culture wells. Statistical comparisons of mean lysis of uninfected versus HCMV-infected were performed using two-way ANOVA test. ***, <i>p</i><0.001; **, <i>p</i><0.01; ns, not significant, <i>p</i>>0.05.</p
