Fig. 5.

Baseline B cell counts as predictors of treatment response and B cell subset alterations in responders versus non-responders. (A) Response rates according to the SLE responder index (SRI) and lupus low disease activity state (LLDAS). (B) Comparisons of baseline B cell and lymphocyte counts between patients who had attained LLDAS at month 24 and patients who had not. Box plots represent baseline cell count distributions. Lines in the boxes denote medians, bounds denote quartiles, whiskers denote ranges and circles denote out or extreme values. (C) Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves for baseline B cell and lymphocyte counts by LLDAS at month 24. High baseline B cell counts performed better as a predictor of non-attaining LLDAS (blue line; area under the curve (AUC): 0.95; 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.83–1.0; P = .006) compared with total lymphocyte counts (green line; AUC: 0.66; 95% CI: 0.35–0.97; P = .308). (D) Spearman's rank correlations of expression levels with time on treatment (months 0–12), and comparisons of these correlations between early responders, late responders and non-responders according to SRI. Antigens were selected based on a false discovery rate (FDR) of <0.2 for the comparison between early and late responders. Benjamini-Hochberg multiple testing correction was applied for P-value adjustment. (E) CD27 and IgA co-expression is apparent in a distinct cluster representing IgA+ switched memory B cells in the t-SNE plot of B cells from all follow-up occasions. (F–G) Alterations of IgA+ switched memory B cells (F) and presumed age-associated B cells (G) (G) during follow-up in early responders (blue), late responders (green) and non-responders (red) according to the SRI. (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)