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Peripheral Blood Lymphocyte Subsets and Heterogeneity of B Cell Subsets in Patients of Idiopathic Inflammatory Myositis with Different Myositis-specific Autoantibodies

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Abstract

Idiopathic inflammatory myopathies (IIM) are a group of myopathies that present with muscle weakness and multiple extra-muscular manifestations, in which lymphocytes play central roles in myositis pathogenesis. This study aimed to explore the clinical characteristics of lymphocyte subsets, especially B cell subsets, in patients with IIM. Our study included 176 patients with active IIM and 210 gender/age-matched healthy controls (HCs). Compared to HCs, patients have reduced counts of T cells, B cells, and natural killer cells. In addition, B cell subsets from 153 patients with IIM and 92 HCs were characterized. Patients had a lower percentage of memory B cells and translational memory B cells, while those patients were with an elevated percentage of CD19+ B cells, plasmablast and naïve B cells compared with HCs. Moreover, to further explore the heterogeneity of B cells in IIM, patients were categorized into three clusters based on clustering analysis. Cluster 1 was dominated by CD19+ B cells, Bregs and naïve B cells, cluster 3 was dominated by memory B cells and plasmablast, and cluster 2 had the highest proportion of translational memory B cells. Notably, patients in cluster 1 presented with higher CK levels, indicating muscle damage, whereas patients in cluster 3 showed a higher incidence of chest tightness. Our study indicated that lymphopenia is a common manifestation in patients with IIM. B cell subsets are abnormally expressed and showed high heterogeneity in patients with IIM. The patients with IIM were divided into three different clusters with different percentages of chest tightness and distinct CK levels.

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No datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.

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Acknowledgements

We thank all the patients and healthy volunteers who participated in this study. We acknowledge assistance with the access of analytic instruments from Translational Medicine Center at The First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University.

Funding

This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (82101889, 82302051, 82371819) and a Joint project of Medical Science and Technology Key Program of Henan Province (LHGJ20230175).

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  1. Zhou Pan and Mengdi Li contributed equally to this manuscript.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Rheumatology and Clinical Immunology, The first affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, China

    Zhou Pan, Mengdi Li, Panpan Zhang, Tianqi Li, Rui Liu, Jia Liu, Shengyun Liu & Yusheng Zhang

  2. Department of Rheumatology and Clinical Immunology, Zhongshan Hospital of Fudan University, Shanghai, China

    Mengdi Li

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Contributions

Study design: ZP, ML, SL, and YZ. Patient enrollment and disease activity evaluation: PZ, SL, JL, TL and YZ. Sample collection: PZ, ML, YZ, RL, JL, TL, ZP, and SL. Sample processing and data analysis: ZP, ML, PZ, and YZ. Drafting of the article: ZP. Review and editing: PZ, YZ, RL, ML and SL. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

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Correspondence to Shengyun Liu or Yusheng Zhang.

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The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by the Ethics Committee of the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University. The patients/participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study.

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Pan, Z., Li, M., Zhang, P. et al. Peripheral Blood Lymphocyte Subsets and Heterogeneity of B Cell Subsets in Patients of Idiopathic Inflammatory Myositis with Different Myositis-specific Autoantibodies. Inflammation (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10753-024-02052-z

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