Immune skew of follicular helper T cells and effector T cells in patients with Sjögren's syndrome

Categorical variables were examined using the two-tailed Fisher’s exact test while correlations between immune cell populations and blood parameters or clinical manifestations were evaluated using Spearman’s correlation analysis. Data also demonstrated that the proportions of CCR7lowTh17 cells were markedly increased in pSS patients as compared to HCs (P = 0.010) and the CCR7lowTh1 and CCR7lowTh2 cells shared the similar tendency in the proportion in pSS when compared with HCs despite reaching no significant difference [Supplementary Table 2, Figure 1B–D, http://links.lww.com/CM9/C136]. [...]the cross-sectional design of our study restricted our ability to comprehend the temporal dynamics and progression of immune changes in pSS. [...]lacking patients with other autoimmune disorders including SLE, rheumatoid arthritis (RA) also limits our ability to contextualize our findings within the broader spectrum of immune responses.