Fig. 3
Flow cytometry analysis of blood. Blood parameters distinguish CM from control groups partially. A Principal component analysis of blood revealed high heterogeneity within CM patients and partial overlap with HIV patients. Each patient is illustrated as a multidimensional data point. Large circles represent the means of each group (CM/HIV+ blue, CM/HIV- orange, HIV pink, Ctrl green). Ellipses of the same color represent the confidence intervals of each group. B Principal components (PCs) comprise multidimensional parameters. Parameters with the highest distinctive power determine PC1 and PC2 and are represented by the length of their vector. C Heatmap of blood parameters. The mean of each parameter was calculated, scaled, centered and clustered hierarchically. D Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis of blood parameters. Sensitivity and specificity are represented by area under the curve (AUC) values, which range from 1 (perfect distinction) to 0.5 (uninformative). Heatmaps illustrate the hierarchy of all parameters according to their distinctive power. When comparing blood parameters, CD56bright NK cells (AUC = 0.9795) were the best parameter to distinguish CM from Ctrl, followed by albumin (AUC = 0.9444). Abbreviations - abs: cell counts/ µl, AUC: area under the curve, Bc: B lymphocytes, BCBD: blood-CSF-barrier disruption, brightNK: CD56bright natural killer cells, CM: cryptococcal meningitis, cMono: classical monocytes, CSF: cerebrospinal fluid, Ctrl: healthy control group, dimNK: CD56dim natural killer cells, Granulo: granulocytes, HIV: human immunodeficiency virus positive, immunocompromised control group, HLA-DR Tc: activated T cells, IgA: immunoglobulin A, IgG: immunoglobulin G, IgM: immunoglobulin M, iMono: intermediate monocytes, Lympho: lymphocytes, mono: monocytes, ncMono: non-classical monocytes, NK: natural killer cells, NKT: natural killer T cells, OCB: oligoclonal bands, PCA: principal component analysis, PC: principal component, plasma: plasma cells, ROC: receiver operating characteristic analysis, Tc: T lymphocytes