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Figure 2 | Arthritis Research & Therapy

Figure 2

From: A profile of immune response to herpesvirus is associated with radiographic joint damage in rheumatoid arthritis

Figure 2

A profile of immune response mainly to CMV correlates with radiographic joint damage in RA. (A) Shown are normalized cytokine concentrations released from peripheral blood mononuclear cells into culture supernatants following 48 hours of stimulation with combined CMV/EBV lysates among healthy blood donors (Control), patients with 'low' joint damage (SHS < 20), and patients with 'high' joint damage (SHS > 20). Cytokines were selected based on the results of the principal components analysis (PCA) with factor loadings > 0.5 for the first factor. All data are adjusted for age and sex using mixed effects models. Statistical significance was tested using 2 degree of freedom tests in the mixed effects models. *P < 0.05. **P < 0.01. (B) Shown are the distributions of the CMV/EBV PCA score for the first principal component among healthy blood donors (Control), patients with negative CMV IgG (CMV IgG-), and patients with positive CMV IgG (CMV IgG+). *P < 0.05 for the Kruskal-Wallis test. (C) Shown are the distributions of radiographic joint damage defined by the total Sharp-van der Heijde score according to the tertiles of the CMV/EBV-1 PCA score. *P < 0.05 for the univariate Spearman correlation coefficient. In all panels, the horizontal lines are the medians. CMV, cytomegalovirus; EBV, Epstein-Barr virus; IFN-γ, interferon gamma; IgG, immunoglobulin G; IL, interleukin; PCA, principal components analysis; pg/ml, picograms per milliliter; RA, rheumatoid arthritis; SHS, Sharp-van der Heijde total score

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