Table 2

Densities of CD14⁺ cells and CD15⁺ cells in tumor intraepithelial, stromal, and overall regions and patient survival with inverse probability weighting (IPW)

	No. of cases	Colorectal cancer-specific survival			Overall survival
	No. of cases	No. of events	Univariable HR (95% CI)*	Multivariable HR (95% CI)*†	No. of events	Univariable HR (95% CI)*	Multivariable HR (95% CI)*†
Tumor intraepithelial region
CD14⁺ cell density
Q1	228	88	1 (referent)	1 (referent)	158	1 (referent)	1 (referent)
Q2	228	64	0.67 (0.47 to 0.95)	0.79 (0.56 to 1.11)	153	0.91 (0.68 to 1.20)	1.01 (0.76 to 1.33)
Q3	229	67	0.75 (0.53 to 1.05)	0.74 (0.51 to 1.06)	151	0.81 (0.60 to 1.09)	0.79 (0.58 to 1.08)
Q4	228	64	0.71 (0.50 to 1.01)	0.82 (0.55 to 1.22)	151	0.89 (0.66 to 1.18)	0.91 (0.64 to 1.28)
P_trend‡			0.086	0.22		0.30	0.29
CD15⁺ cell density
Q1	228	86	1 (referent)	1 (referent)	157	1 (referent)	1 (referent)
Q2	228	67	0.76 (0.54 to 1.08)	0.97 (0.69 to 1.35)	156	0.97 (0.73 to 1.30)	1.09 (0.82 to 1.45)
Q3	229	77	0.82 (0.58 to 1.15)	0.94 (0.66 to 1.35)	162	0.99 (0.74 to 1.33)	1.04 (0.76 to 1.42)
Q4	228	53	0.56 (0.39 to 0.82)	0.58 (0.39 to 0.86)	138	0.77 (0.57 to 1.05)	0.76 (0.55 to 1.06)
P_trend‡			0.0061	0.011		0.14	0.12
Tumor stromal region
CD14⁺ cell density
Q1	228	93	1 (referent)	1 (referent)	169	1 (referent)	1 (referent)
Q2	228	86	0.90 (0.66 to 1.24)	1.07 (0.79 to 1.46)	158	0.96 (0.73 to 1.27)	1.09 (0.83 to 1.44)
Q3	229	59	0.61 (0.42 to 0.86)	0.68 (0.47 to 0.97)	145	0.73 (0.55 to 0.98)	0.77 (0.57 to 1.04)
Q4	228	45	0.38 (0.26 to 0.56)	0.47 (0.31 to 0.69)	141	0.55 (0.41 to 0.73)	0.53 (0.39 to 0.73)
P_trend‡			<0.0001	<0.0001		<0.0001	<0.0001
CD15⁺ cell density
Q1	228	95	1 (referent)	1 (referent)	160	1 (referent)	1 (referent)
Q2	228	71	0.67 (0.48 to 0.93)	0.72 (0.53 to 1.00)	163	0.79 (0.60 to 1.05)	0.77 (0.58 to 1.02)
Q3	229	67	0.50 (0.35 to 0.70)	0.60 (0.42 to 0.86)	153	0.65 (0.48 to 0.87)	0.67 (0.49 to 0.91)
Q4	228	50	0.51 (0.35 to 0.75)	0.61 (0.42 to 0.89)	137	0.67 (0.50 to 0.90)	0.71 (0.52 to 0.97)
P_trend‡			0.0001	0.0036		0.0039	0.016
Overall region
CD14⁺ cell density
Q1	228	83	1 (referent)	1 (referent)	161	1 (referent)	1 (referent)
Q2	228	73	0.83 (0.59 to 1.18)	0.87 (0.62 to 1.24)	155	0.96 (0.72 to 1.28)	0.99 (0.74 to 1.32)
Q3	229	74	0.88 (0.63 to 1.24)	0.94 (0.66 to 1.33)	156	0.99 (0.75 to 1.33)	0.95 (0.70 to 1.29)
Q4	228	53	0.57 (0.39 to 0.83)	0.68 (0.46 to 1.01)	141	0.74 (0.55 to 1.00)	0.70 (0.51 to 0.96)
P_trend‡			0.0074	0.097		0.075	0.034
CD15⁺ cell density
Q1	228	88	1 (referent)	1 (referent)	157	1 (referent)	1 (referent)
Q2	228	73	0.78 (0.55 to 1.09)	0.86 (0.61 to 1.20)	162	0.97 (0.73 to 1.29)	0.90 (0.68 to 1.19)
Q3	229	67	0.59 (0.41 to 0.84)	0.66 (0.46 to 0.95)	158	0.72 (0.53 to 0.97)	0.70 (0.51 to 0.95)
Q4	228	55	0.63 (0.44 to 0.91)	0.80 (0.54 to 1.17)	136	0.80 (0.59 to 1.08)	0.84 (0.61 to 1.15)
P_trend‡			0.0048	0.092		0.043	0.099

*IPW was applied to reduce bias due to the availability of tumor tissue after cancer diagnosis (see ‘Statistical analysis’ subsection for details).
†The multivariable Cox regression model initially included sex, age, year of diagnosis, family history of colorectal cancer, tumor location, tumor differentiation, disease stage, microsatellite instability, CpG island methylator phenotype, KRAS, BRAF, and PIK3CA mutations, and long-interspersed nucleotide element-1 methylation level. A backward elimination with a threshold P of 0.05 was used to select variables for the final models.
‡The P_trend value was calculated across the ordinal quartiles of each myeloid cell density within tumor epithelial, stromal, and overall regions in the IPW-adjusted Cox regression model.