Fig. 5: Immunological characterization of NK cell clusters.

a Based on the screened genes specifically upregulated in the HLH group compared to the HV and IM groups, the expression levels of related genes across all samples and their enrichment in the GO and KEGG pathways. The enrichment results were produced by Metascape and BH-corrected. b Quantification of phosphorylated p65 levels (normalized MFI values) in NK cells from pediatric IM (n = 4) and HLH (n = 5) biologically independent samples. Two-sided Independent-samples t-est was applied. c Based on the screened genes specifically downregulated in the HLH group compared to the HV and IM groups, the expression levels of related genes across all samples and their enrichment in the GO and KEGG pathways. The enrichment results were produced by Metascape and BH-corrected. d Enriched GO terms of differentially expressed genes between EBV-NK and non-EBV-NK groups. The enrichment results were produced by clusterProfiler and BH-corrected. e, f Expression levels of LYST and DUSP1 in NK cells across HV, IM, non-EBV-NK, and EBV-NK groups. g Expression levels of DUSP1 in NK cells across HV, IM, HLH-L, and HLH-D groups. h Box plot showing the scoring of cytokine sets for each cell cluster among the three groups. Comparisons were made using the two-sided Wilcoxon tests and P-values were adjusted using the BH correction.