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. 2019 Jan 31;111(9):933–942. doi: 10.1093/jnci/djy224

Figure 1.

Figure 1.

Estrogen receptor alpha (ERα) expression in The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) head and neck squamous carcinoma (HNSC) cohort and its associations with human papillomavirus (HPV) status, ERα signaling, and outcome. A) Density plot of ERα mRNA expression stratified by HPV status; circles indicate individual values. Blue = HPV-positive tumors; red = HPV-negative tumors. The dashed vertical line at the dip in the distribution of expression values among HPV-positive HNSC indicates the value of 6.5 on the log2 scale used to distinguish low from high ERα expression. B) ERα network expression enrichment versus ERα expression. Blue symbols represent HPV-positive tumors; anatomic sites distinguished by shape (triangles = larynx; squares = oral cavity; circles = oropharynx). Dashed line represents linear regression relationship. C) Kaplan-Meier plot of relationship between ERα expression and overall survival of TCGA HNSC patients who received chemoradiation. Solid line = ERα-high; dashed line = ERα-low; hazard ratio = 0.29 (95% confidence interval = 0.14 to 0.59, P = .001. D) Hazard ratios determined by Cox regression incorporating HPV status and high ERα expression as predictors for TCGA HNSC patients who received chemoradiation. P values based on two-sided Wald tests. HR = hazard ratio.