Comparison of NETs and C5a between the patient and HC group
The NETs and C5a levels in peripheral blood from all patients and controls were compared by the two-tailed unpaired t test with Welch’s correction. It was found to that both the variables in patient group were significantly higher than that in HC group (0.62 ± 0.22 vs. 0.26 ± 0.15,p <0.001 and 4.64 ± 1.04ng/ml vs. 2.88 ± 0.96ng/ml, p <0.001, respectively) (Fig. 2A and Fig. 2B).
Analysis of the relationships in laboratoryvariables in patient group
It was showed by Spearman correlation analysis that PAD4 expressions in neutrophil, which included the percentage of neutrophils expressed PAD4 in all neutrophils and MFI of PAD4+neutrophils, were correlated with NETs (r =0.432, p =0.0054 andr =0.395, p =0.0117, respectively) (Fig.3A and Fig. 3B). In addition, NETs displayed a statistically significant correlation with MPO-ANCA but not with C5a (r =0.415, p =0.0078 andr =0.270, p =0.0920, respectively) (Fig. 3C, Fig. 3D). Furthermore, MPO-ANCA exhibited significant correlation with C5a (r =0.558, p =0.0002) (Fig. 3E).