Fig. 5

iNKT and γδ-T cells show different gene expression profiles in SpA and RA patients. a Frequencies of iNKT and γδ-T cells in indicated groups of rheumatic patients (each dot represents data from a single patient). Statistical analyses (*p < 0.05, **p < 0.01) referred to comparisons of blood samples (patients vs. controls) and comparisons of SF as compared to paired blood samples of patients as done by ANOVA and paired t-tests, respectively (same for b and c). (PB: black symbols; SF: red symbols) b Relative percentage of TCRγδ-hi cells and c IL-23R (lower panel) in γδ-T cells of samples taken from patients and controls. (PB: white bars; SF: red bars) d Principal component analysis (PCA) of transcriptomes (RNAseq data) of iNKT, γδ-T and Tconv cells sorted from SpA (n = 7, red) and RA patients (n = 5, blue). Each sphere symbol represents an individual patient. e Differentially expressed genes are represented in Volcano plots after pairwise comparisons between indicated subsets of SpA and RA patients. Each symbol represents a single gene and genes of interest are highlighted (see also main text). Color coding refers to differentially expressed genes with adjusted p-value less than 0.05 and the log2FC less than −1 (higher expressed in RA derived cells) or greater than 1 (higher expressed in SpA). f Heatmap showing relative expression Th1, Th2, and Th17 related genes in indicated cell subsets from SpA and RA patients. Data throughout this figure are presented as mean ± SEM