Figure 2.

The frequency of effector T_reg subpopulations is decreased in the peripheral blood from RA patients. (A) Gating strategy to identify six subgroups of CD4⁺ T cells based on the expression levels of CD25 and CD45RA: CD25^intCD45RA⁺ cells (Subgroup I, naïve T_reg), CD25^hiCD45RA⁻ cells (Subgroup II, effector T_reg), CD25^intCD45RA⁻ cells (Subgroup III, non-suppressive T_reg), CD25^lowCD45RA⁻ cells (Subgroup IV), CD25⁻CD45RA⁻ cells (Subgroup V, effector T_conv), and CD25⁻CD45RA⁺ cells (Subgroup VI, naïve T_conv). (B) Frequency of each subgroup among CD4⁺ T cells of PBMC from healthy controls (HC, n = 13) and RA patients (n = 13). Statistical differences between HC and RA were calculated by Mann–Whitney test and presented as p-value.