Fig 2: The boxplots reveal the absolute number of COX-2 positive Treg cells (FOXP3+), NK cells (CD56+) and macrophages (CD68+). There is a clear distribution in the direction of the Treg cells. The box plots indicate mild outliers, which are marked with circles. These outliers (case numbers 11 and 19) show an interquartile distance to the third quartile of values that is less than three times higher than the third quartile of values. The difference of the occurrence of the subtypes Treg cells to NK cells, as well as Treg cells to macrophages, is highly significant (** p < 0.001).

Fig 3: Immunohistochemical stainings of PPAR?, Cox-1 and Cox-2 expression in breast carcinoma of 3 patients and a box-plot of nuclear PPAR? and Grading. PPAR? (a, d, g), Cox-1 (b, e, h) and Cox-2 (c, f, i) stainings are illustrated for patients with different grading (Grade 1 in a–c, 2 in d–f and 3 in g–i), with examples of null, average or high expressions. Nucleo:cytoplasmic IRS ratios are indicated in each photomicrograph (×25 magnification) and scale bar equals 100 µm. An enlargement of g (high cytoplasmic and null nuclear PPAR? staining) is presented (j) and scale bar equals 50 µm. Correlation between nuclear PPAR? and grading was presented as box plot (k). The boxes represent the range between the 25th and 75th percentiles with a horizontal line at the median. The bars on top and below depict the 5th and 95th percentiles. Values more than 1.5 box lengths from the 75th percentile are indicated by circles (none) and values more than 3.0 box lengths from the 75th percentile are indicated by asterisks. The numbers on asterisks represent the case number. Statistical significance is shown as p-value from Kruskal–Wallis test (**p < 0.01)

Fig 4: Kaplan–Meier analysis of patient overall survival according to cytoplasmic PPAR? and of Cox-1 expression in subgroups. Overall survival (OS) curves are presented according to cytoplasmic PPAR? status in Cox-1 (a, b) and Cox-2 (c, d) subgroups. OS of Cox-1 is then presented according to cytoplasmic PPAR? (e, f). The IRS cut-off values with the number of cases for each group are indicated in each graph. Statistical significance is shown as p-value from log-rank test (*p < 0.05; **p < 0.01)

Fig 5: Immunohistochemistry staining of COX-2 (10× and 25× magnification) in vulvar cancer tissue showing expression of stromal sTILs with intensity of COX-2 expression < 2 (A) and =2 (B). The arrows in both figures mark exemplarily sTILs (A,B). The Kaplan–Meier curve shows a significantly worse overall survival rate for the patients with a strong COX-2 intensity of sTILs > 2 in long- term survival of 10 years (* p = 0.013, (C)). (C) is labeled with the percentage of patients with vulvar carcinoma still alive after 10 years: In the group of patients with COX-2 expression of sTILs = 2 of vulvar carcinoma, 79% are still alive, whereas among the diseased women with higher COX-2 expression of sTILs, only 52% are still alive in comparison.