Correlation with clinical data
We analyzed the correlations between the laboratory parameters and clinical data (including age, QMGs, the concentration of AchR-Ab and the disease duration) in the patients with MG to explore the clinical significance of the expression of mOX40/mOX40L and sOX40/sOX40L. In the MG group, the expression of OX40 on CD4+ T cells and sOX40 levels were positively correlated with the QMGs (Fig. 2A, J ). The expression of OX40 on CD4+ T cells was positively correlated with the concentration of AchR-Ab (Fig. 2B ). A trend toward a positive correlation was observed between the sOX40 levels and disease duration (Fig. 2L ) and a trend toward a negative correlation was observed between the sOX40L levels and disease duration (Fig. 2O ). The correlation analysis results for the MG group are shown inTable 4 and Fig. 2 .
Furthermore, in the RSMG group, the expression of OX40 on CD4+ T cells positively correlated with the AchR-Ab concentration (Fig. 4A ), while OX40L expression on CD19+ B cells and CD14+ monocytes was negatively correlated with the disease duration (Supplementary Table 10, Fig. 4B, C ). The expression of membrane-bound and soluble OX40/OX40L showed no significant correlation with clinical data in the USMG and PSMG groups (Supplementary Table 9, Supplementary Table 11 ).