3.5. Survival Analyses of Patients Stratified According to Tertiles of Serum sCD40L
death, esophageal cancers, cancer stage, CRC
ESOPHAGEAL CANCER, EVENTS
We performed quantitative survival analyses to assess the influence of serum sCD40L levels on relapse or death in the study participants, with a particular focus on patients with CRC.The analysis of the entire study population revealed 19 events of relapse or death, representing 19.4% of the cohort. Notably, the examination of 5-year RFS rates across tertiles of serum sCD40L levels revealed the following percentages: 79.4% in the lowest sCD40L tertile, 70.1% in the middle tertile, and 69.2% in the highest tertile. However, it is essential to acknowledge that these differences in RFS were not statistically significant within the total study population, irrespective of rigorous adjustment for important covariates such as age, sex, BMI, 25(OH)D levels, vitamin D supplementation or placebo administration, cancer stage, and treatment with adjuvant chemotherapy (In contrast, when the focus was narrowed to patients with CRC, the relapse or death rates observed across the sCD40L tertiles were six patients (14.0%) in the lowest sCD40L tertile, thirteen patients (30.2%) in the middle tertile, and seventeen patients (32.7%) in the highest tertile. The 5-year RFS rates among CRC patients exhibited substantial differences, at 83.8% in the lowest sCD40L tertile, 61.6% in the middle tertile, and 61.2% in the highest tertile. Most notably, the Cox proportional hazard analysis, adjusting for the same comprehensive set of variables mentioned above, revealed that patients in the lowest sCD40L level tertile had a significantly better prognosis compared to those in the highest tertile, with a HR of 0.30 and a 95% CI of 0.11–0.80 (However, such differences in RFS were not observed when comparing patients with gastric and esophageal cancers to those with CRC (