Fig. 4

Associations between tumour mRNA levels and patients’ clinical outcomes. a The associations between primary breast tumour mRNA levels of TGFB1, TGFB2, TGFB3, TGFBR1 and TGFBR2 and patients’ overall survival were evaluated in the TCGA cohort and its subsets stratified by tumour diameter (T), regional lymph node status (N) and ER status using the Cox proportional hazards regression model. b Associations between primary breast tumour mRNA levels and patients’ relapse-free survival in the GEO cohorts. The hazard ratios of death (y-axis, logarithmic scale) for a 1-unit increase in the mRNA expression levels (log2-transformed and standardized) of the five genes for the follow-up periods from 1 to 10 years (x-axis) were shown for each group of patients (title on each panel). The shapes were filled black if the corresponding p-values for likelihood-ratio test were <0.05. The border of shape was coloured red if the corresponding proportional hazards assumption was not met (P <0.1). Missing data in the first column of panel “T ≤2 cm” in panel A were due to 0 event recorded for the first year. The inserts are the same plots as the underscored ones but having zoomed in y-axis to show the overlays