Table 3.

T-cell activation status and mortality from HNSCC, stratified by expression level of NSUN2

Stratification		Death
Variable	Variable	HRa	95% CIb	P value
	T-cell activation
	Exhaustion	1.00
	Intermediate	1.08	0.77–1.50	0.664
	Activation	1.03	0.73–1.47	0.852
	P (for trend)		0.84
Model 1
Low NSUN2	T-cell activation
	Exhaustion	1.00
	Intermediate	2.01	1.15–3.52	0.015
	Activation	2.16	1.22–3.82	0.008
	P (for trend)		0.009
High NSUN2	T-cell activation
	Exhaustion	1.00
	Intermediate	0.74	0.48–1.14	0.174
	Activation	0.57	0.34–0.96	0.033
	P (for trend)		0.028
P value for the interaction between NSUN2 level and T-cell activation		0.002
Model 2
Low NSUN2	T-cell activation
	Exhaustion	1.00
	Intermediate	1.97	1.12–3.47	0.019
	Activation	2.06	1.16–3.68	0.014
	P (for trend)		0.016
High NSUN2	T-cell activation
	Exhaustion	1.00
	Intermediate	0.77	0.49–1.19	0.240
	Activation	0.61	0.36–1.03	0.063
	P (for trend)		0.056
P value for the interaction between NSUN2 level and T-cell activation		0.004

^1.aHR: adjusted hazard ratio, which was obtained from a multivariate Cox proportional hazards regression model with covariates of patient age at diagnosis (per 5 yrs), disease stage, tumor grade, gender (male vs female), smoking status (yes vs no) and primary tumor site (tongue, pharynx and other) in the model 1 (n =247 for low NSUN2 group and n =240 for high NSUN2). In model 2, HPV status (positive vs negative) was also included as a covariate (n = 237 for low NSUN2 group, and n =234 for high NSUN2).

^2.bCI: confidence interval.