Fig. 3

a–f Correlation between the MDSCs and DF disease markers in 178 DF patients, including (a) plasma dengue-RNA, (b) temperature of the fever patients, and (c) Prothrombin time (PT). The MDSC count correlated with the plasma dengue viral RNA level (rho = 0.367, p < .001), body temperature (rho = 0.263, p = .005) and prothrombin time (PT) (rho = 0.475, p < .001). Some immunological markers, including (d) CD4 + T and CD8 + T, (e) death protein 1 (PD-1) and “T cell immunoglobulin domain and mucin domain-3” (Tim3) negatively correlated with the MDSC count. Among the 178 recruited DF patients, 88 were randomly examined, and > 30 cytokines (generally involved in the cytokine storm) were tested, including interleukin, interferon, and tumor necrosis factor. Two of them significantly correlated with the MDSC count: f interferon-α (IFN-α) (rho = 0.43, p < .001) and “regulated upon activation normal T-cell expressed and secreted” (RANTES) (rho = 0.278, p = .019). The correlation was evaluated by Spearman’s analysis