Landscape of infltrating immune cells and related genes in Infectious Mononucleosis and its Associated Characteristics in Children with Primary Epstein-Barr Virus Infection

Background: Infectious mononucleosis (IM) is a clinical condition characterized by a sore throat, swollen lymph nodes in the neck, and fever. Our aim is to investigate the incidence, characteristics, and potential risk factors of IM to facilitate early risk prediction. Methods: We downloaded data from the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database. The limma package in R software was used to identify differentially expressed genes (DEGs). We used Xiantao Academic's software to analyze differences in the immune microenvironment between EBV-infected patients and controls. we examined the correlation between diagnostic markers and inffltrating immune cells to better understand the molecular immune mechanism.Finally, We conducted a retrospective analysis of all immunocompetent patients diagnosed with EBV infection at a tertiary Traditional Chinese Medicine over a three-year period. We evaluated their demographic, clinical, and laboratory characteristics. Results: We demonstrated the landscape of infltrating immune cells in patients with EBV-infected and identifed the top 17 hub immune regulatory genes. Five of the core genes (OAS2,PARP9,IFIT5,ISG15,ICAM1) were signifcantly correlated with the estimated EBV-infected. We verifed that macrophage numbers were remarkably elevated, whereas Treg and Th17 cells were remarkably reduced in the EBV-infected. Th1 and Th2 cells were abundant in the EBV-infected. pDC,DC and NK56 cells were abundant in the EBV-infected. The expression of immune cells is also demonstrated by clinical patient results. Conclusions: The changes in the number and function of immune cells in children with IM in different sexes and ages have certain reference significance for evaluating the overall treatment of IM and their ability to be combined with other pathogenic bacteria.