Fig. 2

Peripheral CD56^dimCD57⁺ NK cells exhibited a selective reduction in SLE patients. A t-SNE map of CD45⁺ lymphocyte cells from HCs and active SLE patients. There were 8 subsets (CD3⁻CD19⁺CD27⁺CD20⁻CD38⁺ plasmablast, CD3⁻CD19⁺CD27⁺CD20⁺CD38⁻ memory B, CD3⁻CD19⁺CD27⁻ naive B, CD3⁺CD56⁺ NKT, CD3⁺T cell, CD3⁻CD56^dimCD57⁻ NK cell, CD3⁻CD56^bright NK cell, and CD3⁻CD56^dimCD57⁺ NK cell). t-SNE was performed simultaneously on four SLE patients with active disease activities and four HCs. B Heatmap representing scaled expression values of the 8 subsets between HC (n = 4) and SLE patients (n = 4). C Representative flow cytometric plot for NK cell subsets (including CD3⁻CD56^dimCD57⁺ NK cells, CD3⁻CD56^bright NK cells, and CD3⁻CD56^dimCD57⁻ NK cells) from a HC and a SLE patient (Left panel). The percentage of three NK cell subsets in total NK cells from patients (n = 37) and HCs (n = 30) (Middle panel). The proportion of NK cell subsets in CD45⁺ lymphocytes in SLE patients (n = 37) and HCs (n = 30) (Right panel). D The correlation of CD56^dimCD57⁺ NK cell proportion with SLEDAI score. E The correlation of CD56^dimCD57⁺ NK cell proportion with the level of C3. F The correlation of CD56^dimCD57⁺ NK cell proportion with the level of C4. G The correlations of CD56^dimCD57⁺ NK cell proportion with the levels of IgG, IgM and IgA. H The correlation of CD56^dimCD57⁺ NK cell proportion with the level of PLT. I The correlation of CD56^dimCD57⁺ NK cell proportion with the level of anti-dsDNA antibody. (* P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001). tSNE: t-distributed stochastic neighbour embedding; SLEDAI: Systemic Lupus Erythematosus Disease Activity Index;C3: serum concentrations of complement C3; C4: serum concentrations of complement C4; IgG:immunoglobulin G; IgM:immunoglobulin M; IgA:immunoglobulin A;PLT: blood platelet; anti-dsDNA antibody: anti-double-stranded-DNA-specific antibody