Univariate Cox proportional hazard regression suggested that five candidate genes, APOOL, BNIP3, HINT3, PTGES3 and RTN3, were not associated with BC prognosis (Fig. 1b), except for F2RL2. The DCA analysis indicated that the predictive ability of the nomogram model was greater than that of the other components at the high-risk threshold (Fig. 1c), suggesting that the nomogram model has the highest predictive ability. Here, PTGES3 is linked to breast cancer.