After excluding the potential effects of age, sex, tumour stage, and tumour purity in 428 HNSCC patients, we found that compared with HNSCC patients with low AVPR2 expression, HNSCC patients with high AVPR2 expression had a lower risk of death (HR 0.484, 95% CI 0.293–0.798, P = 0.004) (Table 1). The gene discussed is AVPR2; the disease is neoplasm.