Fig. 1

Characteristics of T cell subsets in peripheral blood and LSG of pSjD. (a) Peripheral blood obtained from patients with pSjD (n = 30), and HCs (n = 20) were analyzed using flow cytometry. In peripheral blood, cTh1 was significantly decreased (p < 0.0001) and all the cTfh subsets were significantly increased compared with healthy controls. (Tfh1: p < 0.0001, Tfh2: p < 0.0001, Tfh17: p = 0.0021 by M-W U test). (b) LSG samples with matched peripheral blood from pSjD (n = 7) were analyzed. LSG T cells were composed of nearly all memory phenotypes (naïve T cells: p = 0.01, memory T cells: p = 0.01, by Wilcoxon test). (c) Among the increasing memory CD4⁺ T cells, both CXCR3⁺ Th1 cells and Tfh1 cells significantly increased in LSG compared with matched blood samples (Th1: p = 0.03, Tfh1: p = 0.01, by Wilcoxon test). *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001, ****P < 0.0001.