The exploration of potential variation in baseline cytokine levels between males and females in the whole population revealed no sex-related differences (Additional file 2: Table S4), while we observed statistically significant lower values of IL-6 (p < 0.001), IL-8 (p = 0.019) and sPD-L1 (p = 0.006) in the MM cohort compared with the NSCLC cohort (Additional file 2: Table S5). The gene discussed is IL6; the disease is non-small cell lung carcinoma.