Increased expression of IL-6 in Blimp-1^ko DCs from female mice and IL-6–dependent autoantibody generation. Splenic DCs (A) and BM-DCs (B) were prepared as described in Materials and methods and cultured with or without LPS stimulation. IL-6 in the supernatant was measured by ELISA. Mean ± SD of three independent experiments is shown. n = 6. (C) IL-6 secretion by purified splenic DCs of control, DCBlimp-1^ko, and IL-6^+/− DCBlimp-1^ko. Mean ± SD of three independent experiments is shown. n = 5. (D) Serum from 4-mo-old mice was obtained, and the level of dsDNA and ENA5 IgG was measured as described in Materials and methods. Each dot represents an individual mouse and horizontal bars indicate mean.