We therefore conducted a competing risks analysis to address this potential factor and found that the association between the IL-6 and IL-17A classifier and survival was not affected by censoring of the 11 individuals who died of causes other than lung cancer (fully adjusted model, for patients with high levels of both markers (HR: 11.57; 95% CI, 2.132.10 – 63.0662.13, P=0.005). Here, IL17A is linked to lung cancer.