Multimodal Peripheral Blood Immunophenotyping and Single‐Cell Epigenetic Analysis of Knee Osteoarthritis Reveals Expansion and Epigenetic Dysregulation of Treg Cell and Nonclassical Monocyte Populations
Authors' conclusion
Knee OA is characterized by validated systemic expansions of specific Treg cell and monocyte subsets. Single-cell epigenetic profiling suggests epigenetically distinct subpopulations driven by age, OA, comorbid conditions, or migration from circulation to the periphery.
Study context
- Population
- Patients with knee osteoarthritis (OA), including radiographic progressors (RPs), and healthy controls; peripheral blood samplesvalidation cohorts n = 723
- Participants
- 21 vs 11
- Comparison
- Knee OA vs healthy controls
- OAn = 21
- Healthy controls (HCs)n = 11reference
- Outcome
- Peripheral blood immune cell populations (CyTOF)
Methodological detailsmultimodal immunophenotyping (CyTOF), DNA methylation-based imputation models in two independent validation cohorts, single-cell Assay for Transposase-Accessible Chromatin sequencing (scATAC-seq) in a patient subset
- Multimodal immunophenotyping (CyTOF)
- DNA methylation-based imputation models in two independent validation cohorts
- scATAC-seq in a patient subset
Main finding
As reported in the abstract
- Significant expansions of CD8+ central memory T cells, CD4+ Treg cells and nonclassical monocytes in OA vs HCs
- all P ≤ 0.05
- Expansions confirmed in the large-scale validation cohorts
- all P < 0.0001
Original publication
Multimodal Peripheral Blood Immunophenotyping and Single‐Cell Epigenetic Analysis of Knee Osteoarthritis Reveals Expansion and Epigenetic Dysregulation of Treg Cell and Nonclassical Monocyte Populations. Arthritis Rheumatol. Published 4 June 2026. doi:10.
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