Fig. 4

The level of serum inflammatory cytokines was elevated in CADASIL patients, and they were associated with virulence factors (VFs). A The level of six serum inflammatory cytokines was measured by ELISA in two groups of samples. Case, n = 12; control, n = 10. The significance levels were tested by Student’s t-test. *p-value < 0.05; **p-value < 0.01; ns, not significant. B Volcano plot of the significantly different VFs between metagenomic samples from case (n = 24) and control group (n = 28). Forty-three VFs were enriched in the case group (color in orange), while 35 VFs were enriched in the control group (color in blue). NS indicates not significant. p-value < 0.05 was set as the threshold. C Heat map of the number of significantly different VF homologs belonging to each category between the case and control groups. D Heat map of the abundance of 43 VFs that enriched in the case group. VFs belonging to the same category were listed together, and these VFs were divided into eight categories. E Heat map of the Spearman’s correlation between the enriched VFs in the case group and six serum inflammatory cytokines. Red indicates the positive correlation, while blue indicates the negative correlation. *p-value < 0.05; **p-value < 0.01. F–H Spearman correlation between the abundance of VFG045808 and serum level of CCL2 (F), between the abundance of VFG002126 and serum level of IL-6 (G), and between the abundance of VFG002555 and serum level of IL-1β (H) in 22 subjects (case, n = 12, color in orange; control, n = 10, color in blue). A total of 95% confidence interval around smooth was displayed, and Spearman rank correlation coefficient and p-values were shown in the plot