Fig. 4

Characterisation of T cell subsets and their correlation with clinical characteristics. (a, d) Expression of activation, senescence and exhaustion molecules by CD4 (a) and CD8⁺T (d) lymphocytes from the PLWHs by flow cytometry. Statistical analysis was performed using Kruskal-Wallis. The heatmap illustrates the p-values for pairwise comparisons. A green color indicates statistical significance at P < 0.05, while red denotes no significant difference (see color bar). (b, e) The correlation matrix shows the associations between the clinical characteristics and immune markers within the CD4⁺T subsets (b) and CD8⁺T subsets (e). The colors signify negative correlations (red) and positive correlations (blue). The size of the squares and the saturation of the color denote the absolute values of the Spearman coefficients. (c, f) Multidimensional correlation analysis between T cell subsets and parameters of immune function within CD4⁺T subsets (c) and CD8⁺Tsubsets (f). The rectangular boxes represent Spearman’s correlations between the different immune markers, with red indicating negative correlations and blue indicating positive correlations, with darker colors and larger color blocks indicating stronger correlations. The relationship between each subset of T cells and each immune variable was determined via Mantel’s test, with lines of different thicknesses related to Mantel’s r statistic, while different ranges of P values are indicated by lines of different colors. VL: viral load, WBC: white blood cells, HGB: hemoglobin, PLT: platelets, T.BIL: total bilirubin, ALT: alanine aminotransferase, AST: aspartate aminotransferase, GLU: glucose, TG: triglycerides, CHOL: total cholesterol, CM: central memory cells, EM: effector memory cells, TNF-α: tumor necrosis factor-alpha, IL-2: interleukin-2, CXCR3: C-X-C motif chemokine receptor 3, MX1: murine myxovirus resistance 1, PD-1: programmed cell death protein 1, TIGIT: T cell Immunoreceptor with Ig and ITIM domains, HLA-DR: human leukocyte antigen DR, T-bet: T-box expressed in T cells, GrB: Granzyme B, IFNg: IFN-γ