Activation-induced cell death of NK cells in canine atopic dermatitis revealed by Droplet-Sequencing data of peripheral blood mononuclear cells

Atopic dermatitis (AD) is a mutual allergic skin disease between humans and dogs manifesting varieties of similarities in their immune responses to the disease. Recently, activation-induced cell death (AICD) of NK cells was acknowledged as a novel disrupted immunoregulation in human AD. To gain insight into its plausible commotion in canine AD, NK cell expression profiles extracted from PBMC Drop-Sequencing (Drop-Seq) data of normal and AD dogs were analyzed along with human NK cell profiles of healthy and AD patients previously reported. According to the results, a total of 2,689 differentially expressed genes (DEG) between healthy and AD conditions (P <= 0.0001) were presented-and some of them were associated with cell apoptosis regulation (P <= 0.1). Interestingly, enhanced expressions of 13 AICD-associated genes were demonstrated in NK cells obtained from AD dogs concordant with those previously reported in AD patients. This study hereby supports the idea of AD inducing AICD of canine NK cells using a novel strategy to analyze target immune cell profiles presented in canine PBMC single-cell RNA-Seq data.