Fig. 4

Principal component analysis and clustering of cytokine profiles in newly diagnosed SLE patients (n = 23) and healthy subjects (n = 30). Information of nine variables related to studied cytokines (EBI3, TGF-β, IL-10, IL-12p35, PDL-1, FasL genes and IL-10, TGF-β, and IL-35 serum levels) were extracted and converted into two components 1, and 2 using PCA based on the loading values. The cumulative percent of the variance of the two components was 88.47. Data showed that healthy subjects were placed in clusters 1 and 2 (blue and yellow) and to the left of the dendrogram, while SLE patients were placed in clusters 3 and 4 (red and gray) and to the right of the dendrogram (a). The results also showed that by considering components 1 and 2 data extracted from the mRNA and protein levels of IL-10, TGF-β, and IL-35, SLE patients could be differentiated from healthy subjects (b)