Fig. 3.

Plasmablast expansion in patients with varying severity of acute dengue infection and correlation of frequency of plasmablasts with frequency of Tfh cells. The frequency of plasmablasts was measured in patients with DF (n = 18), DHF (n = 22), primary dengue infection (n = 13), secondary infection (n = 27), acute DENV2 infection (n = 40) and healthy individuals (n = 12) (a). The frequency of plasmablasts (n = 14) was correlated with the frequency of Tfh cells in acute infection (Spearman r = 0.91, p < 0.0001) (b) and with the frequency of IL-21 producing Tfh cells in acute infection (Spearman r = 0.78, p < 0.0001) (c). The frequencies of plasmablasts were compared between individual patients between the acute and convalescent phase (d) and the plasmablast frequencies in the convalescent phase were correlated with the frequency of IL-21 producing Tfh cells during convalescent phase (Spearman r = 0.92, p < 0.0001) (e). The lines display the median and the IQR. *P < 0.05, ***p < 0.001, ****p < 0.0001