Session Information
Session Type: Poster Session A
Session Time: 10:30AM-12:30PM
Background/Purpose: Sjögren’s syndrome (SS) is a chronic autoimmune disease characterized by the infiltration of circulating immune cells into the salivary and lacrimal glands. The properties of the peripheral immune cells associated to SS are only partially understood. In this work we aimed to comprehensively characterize the compositional cell changes and the gene expression changes of the circulating immune system associated to Sjögren’s Syndrome.
Methods: Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cells were collected from 32 SS patients and 10 sex and age matched healthy controls. Single cell transcriptome analysis was performed using droplet-based 3’ scRNA-Seq technology. After clustering and annotation of the main circulating innate and adaptive immune cell types, compositional differences were tested using the cell frequencies using linear modelling. Alternatively, we used Covariant Neighborhood Analyses to identify compositional changes associated to diseases and not captured by the standard cell clusters. For each cell type, differential gene expression was performed using MAST.
Results: A total of 198,078 peripheral blood cells passed the quality control and were clustered and annotated into 27 immune cell types. SS was associated with an increased abundance of cells from the T compartment, including CD4+TH2, CD8+TEM and proliferative T. Conversely, SS had significantly less circulating CD4 and CD8+ naive T cells, MAIT, pDC, DC3 and memory B cells compared to healthy controls. CNA analysis identified an independent subpopulation of CD8+ T cells significantly expanded in SS. Differential gene expression analyses revealed transcriptomic changes in all cell compartments, with more significant regulation occurring in specific cell types including NKCD16+, Tregs, TFH, B memory, and CD14+CCL2Hi monocytes. Pathway analysis identified a strong interferon-response signature across many cell types as well as cell-specific aberrant regulatory changes. The CD8+ T cell subpopulation associated to SS through CNA showed a significant enrichment of genes associated to SS risk.
Conclusion: This study provides the largest single cell transcriptomic analysis of circulating immune cells in SS performed to date. The changes both at the compositional and gene expression levels provide a comprehensive characterization of the immunological processes that are altered in the disease.
To cite this abstract in AMA style:
Gómez Gómez A, Corominas H, Garcia Vicuña R, Freire González M, Melchor-Díaz S, Vela Casasempere P, Estrada-Alarcón P, Tandaipan J, Fernandez Castro M, Rojas Herrera S, Rodríguez López M, Paredes-Romero B, Muñoz S, López M, Braña I, Bonilla G, Menor Almagro R, Manrique-Arija S, Blazquez Cañamero M, López-Núñez L, Galisteo Veiga C, Alegre-Sancho J, Rosas Gómez de Salazar J, Pérez Venegas J, Font-Urgelles J, Andrés Román Ivorra J, Sequí-Sabater J, Ortega-Castro R, Moriano C, Manzano-Canabal G, Peralta-Ginés C, Narváez J, Cáliz-Cáliz R, Martínez-Ferrin J, Sánchez Bilbao L, Serrano-Benavente B, Boix- Martí N, Selles-Rius A, Pérez M, Cañete J, Palau Balaña N, Alvarez Errico D, Guillén Y, Patiño Galindo J, Julià A, Marsal Barril S, Andreu J. Single cell characterization of the circulating immune system in Sjögren’s Syndrome [abstract]. Arthritis Rheumatol. 2025; 77 (suppl 9). https://acrabstracts.org/abstract/single-cell-characterization-of-the-circulating-immune-system-in-sjogrens-syndrome/. Accessed .« Back to ACR Convergence 2025
ACR Meeting Abstracts - https://acrabstracts.org/abstract/single-cell-characterization-of-the-circulating-immune-system-in-sjogrens-syndrome/