The combination of high caspase-3 and -8 expression was significantly associated with adverse breast cancer-specific survival in the total patient cohort (P = 0.021) (Fig. 3c); significance was not, however, retained in multivariate analysis using the previous confounding variables (HR 1.069, 95% CI 0.967–1.182; P = 0.194). The gene discussed is CASP3; the disease is breast cancer.