Peripheral blood immune cell subsets, cytokine profiles, and inflammatory mediators were compared between 88 axSpA patients, 91 PsA patients, and 49 healthy donors using high-dimensional spectral flow cytometry (230 million acquired events) to identify disease-specific immunophenotypic signatures.
AxSpA and PsA had clearly distinct immune profiles: axSpA showed innate-like activation (expanded γδ T cells, plasmablasts, Th17 skewing, elevated inflammasome cytokines), while PsA featured adaptive/memory responses (more dendritic cells, central memory CD4+ T cells, elevated IL-17A, sIL2R, sTNFR1). A regularized regression model distinguished the two with a cross-validated AUC of 0.94.
Cross-sectional design limits causal inference; peripheral blood may not fully reflect tissue-level immunopathology; the impact of concurrent treatments on immunophenotyping is not detailed in the abstract.
AxSpA and PsA have biologically distinct immune signatures despite clinical overlap — axSpA leans innate/activated while PsA leans adaptive/memory. These findings support the future development of biomarker-guided treatment stratification rather than treating them as interchangeable SpA subtypes.
Explore related topics
