To further confirm that the cell death of human FLS transduced with BVCARHAdV5-PUMA was due to apoptosis, an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) was performed to measure the degree of chromatin fragmentation and nucleosome released in the cell cytoplasm. Non-transduced FLSs served as the control of background cytoplasmic nucleosomes, whereas FLSs transduced with BVCARHAdV5-GFP served as control for cytotoxic effects of HAdV5 vector transduction. For FLS samples transduced with the lowest vector dose of 10 vp/cell BVCARHAdV5-PUMA, the amount of cytoplasmic nucleosomes was significantly higher compared to control samples (Fig. 3e), suggesting induction of FLS apoptosis. The level of cytoplasmic nucleosomes increased at higher vector doses, reaching a plateau at the relatively low dose of 20 vp/cell (Fig. 3e). A similar profile was obtained with FLS pre-treated with the cytokine TNFα (Fig. 3e). For FLS pre-treated with IL-17, individually or in combination with TNFα, the overall levels of cytoplasmic nucleosomes were lower, compared to those of non-treated or TNFα-treated FLS (Fig. 3e).