Blood eosinophilia and eosinophilic inflammation correlates
strongly with AR
In order to identify the cellular drivers of airway inflammation in AR,
we took a deeper look into the SSIC cohort.
[10,
11] Using flow cytometry data from
whole blood analysis, we performed unsupervised PhenoGraph clustering of
whole blood subsets and correlated them with atopy status
(Figure 1A-C and Supplementary Table 3 ). Of all cell
subsets, eosinophils were identified as the only leukocyte cluster
directly associated with atopy (Figure 1B and C ).
Atopic individuals were demonstrated to have higher frequencies of
eosinophils than individuals without atopy (Supplementary Figure
1A ). Following this, we did a correlation analysis of the symptoms of
AR with eosinophil counts. While atopy status was defined objectively by
SPT, assessment of AR manifestation and symptoms for SSIC cohort was
based on a survey questionnaire. [11]
Despite the subjective nature of these self-reported parameters, we
observed strong associations between eosinophils and AR, where AR cases
registered significantly higher eosinophil frequencies than non-AR
controls (Figure 1D ). The same trend was observed for
total IgE levels (Figure 1E ).