Fig. 3

Gene set clusters of the pre-acute (left) and acute phase (right). a The cluster of the pre-acute phase contained 11 gene sets being upregulated in leukocytes of female patients. These gene sets are all related to wound healing processes. Eight representative gene sets are shown here. The complete set is given in Additional file 1: Fig. S7. b In comparison to healthy controls, the gene sets were higher expressed in the leukocytes of both sexes. A distinctively higher expression was observed in the leukocytes of female patients. c The cluster of the acute phase contained 19 gene sets being upregulated in female patients. Eleven of these were associated with growth and development. Four representative gene sets are listed here. The complete list is given in Additional file 1: Fig. S8. d In comparison to healthy controls, leukocytes of both sexes showed a higher expression of these gene sets, distinctively higher expression was observed in leukocytes of female patients. The z-transformed expression values were referred to as ‘scaled expression’ values. Significance of difference between the expression of genes of male and female patients was tested using two-sided Student’s t-tests (* P < 0.05, mean bar and Whiskers of the boxplots: mean ± se)