Fig. 2: Upregulated pathways in myoid, leydig, stroma cells, and macrophages associated with iGCA, together with the presence of T cells in the testis with iGCA and cell–cell interactions.

Heatmap of differentially expressed genes that contributed to the upregulated pathways in a MYD cells, b LEY cells, c STRO cells, d SRT cells, and e MCR of iNOA men with GCA vs. control tests with normal spermatogenesis (CTL), as described by the Reactome Pathway Database and GO Biological Process (Supplementary information, Fig. S4, Dataset S13–15); the color scale of the heatmap represents expression values, and the heatmap shows the intensity of gene expression per each cell. Dot plots summarize the most relevant pathways, and the dot size is proportional to the percentage of genes expressed in each pathway. f The blend plot visualizes the co-expression of the CD8 and CD69 antigen transcripts in the T cell (TCL) population (left). g The projection map and the relative distribution of iGCA TCL identities defined on the classification of Szabo et al.²⁶. h Blend plots visualizing the expression of functional markers as GZMM, GZMK (left), CCL4, and CCL5 (right) in the TCL of iNOA men with GCA (Supplementary Dataset S12). i Heatmap showing the total number of interactions between cell types in the decidua dataset obtained with CellPhoneDB for IGCA samples (right) and healthy donor (right). j DotPlot of selected ligand–receptor interactions produced using CellPhoneDB. P values are represented by increasing circle size. The means of the average expression level of interacting molecule 1 in cluster 1 and interacting molecule 2 in cluster 2 are indicated by color. k Violin plot for CD74 in iGCA MCR vs. control adult testis. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.