To gain insights into functional and molecular alterations of T lymphocytes in the context of SSc pathogenesis, we first isolated CD4+ T lymphocytes from the PBMCs of 48 SSc patients and 16 age- and sex-matched healthy donors (HD) by CD4+ positive cell sorting (Fig. 1a, b; Additional file 1: Table S1). The gene discussed is CD4; the disease is systemic sclerosis.