Figure 4.

Increased ex vivo T-cell proliferation after stimulation with CoV-2 spike peptide pool in aCD20-MS patients compared to healthy control group. (A, B) PBMCs from healthy controls (n=17) and aCD20-MS patients (n=19) were stained with CFSE dye and stimulated with DMSO negative control (0.4%), and full overlapping spike peptide pool (1 µg/mL) for 6 days. (A) Representative flow cytometry data for the detection of CFSE-low proliferating CD4⁺ (grey) and CD8⁺ (red) T-cells after antigen incubation of PBMCs from one aCD20-MS patient and one healthy control individual. See also Figure S6 . (B) Comparison of magnitude of proliferative CD4⁺ (black) and CD8⁺ (red) T-cells responses after exposure to overlapping spike peptide pool. Data is presented as %CD4/8⁺ CFSE-low, with DMSO negative control values subtracted. Only test samples with %CD4/8⁺ CFSE-low value above 1.5X negative control and higher than 0.2% after negative subtraction were considered positive. Fractions of samples above positivity cut-off are indicated on top of each dataset. Horizontal lines inside graph represent mean values. Calculated P values are as follow: **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001; Mann-Whitney U tests.