Fig. 1

Low-dose IL-2 immunotherapy and SARS-CoV-2 infection induce opposite transcriptional changes in immune cells. A Overview of the DILfrequency, COMBAT and INCOV cohorts. B Differential expression induced by low-dose IL-2 immunotherapy (DILfrequency) and SARS-CoV-2 infection (COMBAT and INCOV) on the top six up and downregulated genes from the anti-inflammatory gene expression signature induced by low-dose IL-2 treatment (IL2-AIS), previously identified in the DILfrequency cohort. Data shown depicts the log₂ fold change (FC) values in each cohort and were calculated in the different immune subsets identified in the respective study. P values and additional IL2-AIS constituent genes are shown in Additional file 3: Fig. S1. C Distribution of the IL2-AIS scores in T cells from each participant group in the COMBAT cohort. Data was stratified by disease group and COVID-19 disease severity. P values were calculated by comparing each patient group with healthy controls using a two-sided Mann–Whitney U test followed by FDR adjustment. D Mean IL2-AIS scores in CD8⁺ T cells from each participant group in the INCOV cohort from samples collected during the first 14 days after symptoms onset. Data was stratified by COVID-19 disease severity. P values are calculated by comparing the severe or critical COVID-19 group with the mild COVID-19 group using a two-sided Mann–Whitney U test. In C and D, each box ranges from the first quartile (Q1) to the third quartile (Q3), with a central line indicating the median. Treg, regulatory T cells. Tconv, conventional T cells. MNP, mononuclear phagocytes. The IL2-AIS scores were derived from pseudo-bulk samples aggregated from single-cell RNAseq data of PBMCs