Figure 3.

Dominant B‐cell clones are present in GBS patients after treatment with IVIg. RNA was isolated from PBMC before and 1 week after treatment with IVIg and immunoglobulin transcripts were sequenced. Potential clones were identified as the percent of (all) IGG sequences having the same V and D region usage and the same CDR3 length. Within each patient, unique clones are represented by a different color (only clones of >1%). Before treatment, a very dominant clone was identified in patient 1 (A). After treatment, the number of dominant clones (>5%, indicated with asterisks) increased in all patients and dominant clones were more common than in healthy controls (n = 5; B). Analysis of the CDR3 amino acid composition of the most prevalent clone of every patient before and after treatment identified common motifs (data shown as frequency; C). Note that after treatment the most prevalent clones were of the IgG2 subclass. Comparison of the IgG clone frequency from patient 1 before and after treatment revealed only little overlap between clones (D).