To identify the autophagy signaling pathway, the authors of this study also investigated p-PI3K, p-AKT, and AKT expression using Western blotting, finding significantly higher p-PI3K/PI3K (p = 0.001) and p-AKT/AKT (p = 0.001) ratios in the cholesteatoma epithelium than in EAC epithelium. The gene discussed is AKT1; the disease is cholesteatoma.