Fig 2: Receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) curve depicting the ability of EV features to characterize resilience among soldiers. (a) the change in intensity variability of localized THSD1+ bright spots among large-sized EVs (b) the change in average minimum side scatter intensity among medium-sized EVs. AUC, area under the curve; (95% Confidence Interval)

Fig 3: Comparison of EV features at baseline between low and high resilient (Res) individuals. Independent samples t-test or Mann-Whitney U test (as appropriate) were used to compare differences in EV features at baseline between low resilient (n = 10) and high resilient (n = 10) individuals. No significant differences were observed at baseline in (a) the average maximum pixel intensity in brightfield images of large-sized EVs, (b) the average intensity among medium-sized THSD1+ EVs, (c) the median maximum pixel intensity in brightfield images of large-sized EVs, (d) the median intensity of localized THSD1+ bright spots (defined as bright sports in the image that are 3 pixels in radius or less) among large-sized EVs, and (e) the variability of side scatter aspect ratio, a measure of circularity, with an aspect ratio of 1 indicating a perfect circle

Fig 4: Overview of extracellular vesicle (EV) analysis. (a) EVs were isolated from plasma samples using size exclusion chromatography (SEC). (b) EV concentrations and size were measured using nanoparticle tracking analysis (NTA). (c) EV samples were stained with immunofluorescence markers associated with exosomes (CD63), microvesicles (VAMP3), and apoptotic bodies (THSD1) and then assessed using imagine flow cytometry to collect multispectral images of each EV. (d) Quantitative information from the images, known as features, were exported for analysis. Figure created with BioRender.com