Fig. 3
Comparison of the performance of adenosine deaminase (ADA) and the T-SPOT assay in the pleural fluid (PF) stratified by age. a Comparison of median ADA levels between different age groups. b Comparison of median spot-forming cells (SFCs) in the PF T-SPOT assay between different age groups. For group comparison, the Kruskal-Wallis test was used. ns, not significant. *p < 0.05,**p < 0.01,***p < 0.005; & represents internationally recognized cut-off (40 IU/L), and # represents the cutoff (22.4 IU/L for ADA, 466 SFCs/106 mononuclear cells for PF T-SPOT) derived from the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves. The green and orange lines represent the median PF Max SFCs in the TPE and non-TPE groups, respectively