Figure 4.

CXCR3 ligands and markers of epithelial damage correlate with CD8 T cells numbers in the airways

BAL immune cells and protein concentrations were analyzed post-COVID-19 infection.

(A) Heatmap displaying the relationship between proteins and immune cell frequencies. The proteins and immune cell traits displayed are those with at least one significant (5% FDR) association from linear regression analyses (see Table S2K).

(B and C) For each sample, protein concentrations for CXCL9, CXCL 10, and CXCL 11 were normalized to the median concentration in healthy controls. For each sample, the mean of the normalized values for the 3 proteins was calculated to provide a summary metric for CXCR3 chemokines. This was then plotted against versus (B) T, NK, and NKT proportions in post-COVID-19 patients and healthy controls and (C) monocyte frequencies and subsets in post-COVID-19 patients only.

(D) BAL T cell frequency versus CD4 and CD8a concentrations as measured by Olink.

(E) CD8a concentration versus CASP3, EPCAM, MB, and DPP4 in the airways.

(F) CXCL9, CXCL10, and CXCL11 concentration in in the BAL were measure by legendplex.

(G) DPP4, albumin, and LDH concentrations in the BAL determined by ELISA. Data are presented as median ± IQR.

(A) Pearsons correlation of n = 19 post-COVID-19 patients, the r value is shown.

(B–E) Each point represents an individual patient, linear regression line ±95% confidence intervals are depicted, and r and p values from Pearsons correlation are stated. (F and G) Represents n = 38 post-COVID-19 and n = 20 healthy control individuals. Statistics were conducted using Mann-Whitney U test. ^∗p < 0.05, ^∗∗p < 0.01, ^∗∗∗p < 0.005, ^∗∗∗∗p < 0.001. pCOVID = post-COVID-19.