Fig. 5

Patients’ outcome in RCC was associated with serum hepcidin and GDF-15 levels. For relapse analysis, patients were divided into the two subgroups of patients with or without relapse. (a) Serum hepcidin (**p ≤ 0.002) and (b) serum GDF-15 (***p ≤ 0.0001, *p = 0.02) levels of RCC patients were compared to control patients. (c) For survival analysis patients were assigned to two groups according to their serum hepcidin and serum GDF-15 levels, respectively. Patients with serum hepcidin levels below 12.7 ng/ml had a trend towards higher survival than patients with serum hepcidin levels above 12.7 ng/ml (Log-Rank p = 0.09). Ticks indicate right-censoring. (d) Patients with GDF-15 serum levels below 1200 pg/ml had a higher survival than patients with GDF-15 serum levels above 1200 pg/ml (Log-Rank **p = 0.001)