CD14+ monocyte, GZMB+CD8+ T cell, CD56dimCD16+ NK cell, and naïve B cell were increased significantly in TA patients’ PBMC
According to the cluster analysis in this study, we compared the proportions of different types of cells in the TA patients and healthy controls. We used χ2 test to analyze the differences in the composition of M, T, and B cell populations between TA patients and healthy controls by SPSS 20.0. The data showed that M (Cluster 0, 4, 6, 8) and B (Cluster 3, 9) cells increased significantly while T (Cluster 1, 2) cell population decreased (P < 0.05)(Table 2, Figure S1) in TA patients as compared to healthy controls.
In order to further analyze the differences in gene expression of TA patients and healthy controls, we compared the composition of M, T, and B cell subclusters (Figure S2a, b, c) . Major findings of our study showed a significant increase in CD14+ monocytes and a reduction in CD16+ monocytes to CD1C+ DCs ratio in M cell types (P < 0.05). Among the T cell populations, the proportion of NKT cells and CD56dim CD16+ NK cells increased while proportion of CD4+ T cells, APCs, low ribosomal expressing NK cells, CIML, and CD56neg NK cells decreased in TA patients as compared to healthy controls (P < 0.05). In the B cell population, the ratio of naïve B cells increased while the ratio of plasma cells to pDCs decreased in TA patients as compared to healthy controls (P < 0.05).