Fig. 1

Study outline. In total, blood samples from 29 patients with chronic HCV were collected during treatment with direct-acting antivirals (before sofosbuvir + ribavirin (SOF + RBV) therapy (n = 26), at week 4 (n = 25), 12 (n = 24), 24 (n = 24), 36 (n = 21), and at long-term follow-up week 120 (n = 9), as well as from 22 matched healthy controls. Chronic HCV patients receiving ledipasvir/sofosbuvir (LDV/SOF) were sampled at baseline (n = 10), week 2 (n = 1), 8 (n = 2), 12 (n = 7), and follow-up weeks 36 (n = 2), 60 (n = 8), and 108 (n = 2). The NK cell phenotype and function was assessed using multi-color flow cytometry. These data were analyzed by conventional gating, relative expression of markers and multifunction, as well as in dimensionality reductive manners with stochastic neighbor embedding (SNE), principal component analysis (PCA), donor-to-donor expression variation (DEV), and inverse Simpson diversity index (SDI) analysis