# A Novel Prognostic Model for Gastric Cancer with EP_Dis-Based Co-Expression Network Analysis
## 3 Results
### Selection of Ferroptosis-Related Genes Associated with Patient Prognosis  
We performed univariate and multivariate Cox regression analysis to evaluate the association between the DE-FRGs identified by P-WGCNA and EP-WGCNA and the prognosis of GC patients, using their survival time and status as dependent variables. We used a \(p\)-value \(<\) 0.1 for univariate analysis and a \(p\)-value \(<\) 0.05 for multivariate analysis as the screening criteria. Among the DE-FRGs identified by P-WGCNA, nine P-FRGs were identified, including _ALB_, _AR_, _BNIP3_, _CBS_, _CDC2A_, _FABP4_, _MEG3_, _MYB_ and _PDK4_ (Supplementary Materials Table S1), while among the DE-FRGs identified by EP-WGCNA, eight P-FRGs were identified, including _ALB_, _BNIP3_, _DPEP1_, _GLS2_, _MEG3_, _PDK4_, _TF_ and _TSC22D3_, as shown in Table 2. The complete results of Cox regression analysis based on P-WGCNA and EP-WGCNA screened genes are presented in Supplementary Materials Tables S2 and S3. Then, we used Log-rank test (with Log-rank \(p<\) 0.05 as the screening criterion) and Kaplan-Meier (KM) curve analysis to examine the correlation between these P-FRGs and the overall survival of GC patients. We found that all of them were significantly associated with the overall survival. In Figure 2 are the KM curves of the eight P-FRGs screened by EP-WGCNA-Cox. Among these genes, _ALB_, _BNIP3_, _DPEP1_, _FABP4_, _MEG3_, _PDK4_, _TF_ and _TSC22D3_ demonstrated significantly higher survival time in the low expression group than in the high expression group, while _GLS2_ had significantly higher survival time in the high expression group than in the low expression group. The KM curves of the nine P-FRGs screened by P-WGCNA-Cox are presented in Supplementary Materials Figure S1.  
Figure 1: (**A,B**): Gene clustering tree and module division based on P-WGCNA and EP-WGCNA methods, respectively. The dynamic tree cut represents the module divided by the original calculation and the merged dynamic represents the merged result; (**C,D**): The correlation between each module  
and GC phenotype based on P-WGCNA and EP-WGCNA methods, respectively. Red indicates that the module is positively correlated with GC phenotypes, and blue indicates that the module is negatively correlated with GC phenotypes. The greater the absolute value of the number, the stronger the correlation; (**E,F**): The number of DE-FRGs contained in significant modules identified based on P-WGCNA and EP-WGCNA methods, respectively. Green represents the ferroptosis-related genes, other colors represent the module colors selected, and numbers represent the number of genes contained in each module.  
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c} \hline \hline \multirow{2}{*}{**Characteristics**} & \multicolumn{2}{c}{**Univariate Analysis**} & \multicolumn{2}{c}{**Multivariate Analysis**} \\ \cline{2-5}  & **Hazard Ratio (95\% CD)** & **\(p\) Value** & **Hazard Ratio (95\% CI)** & **\(p\) Value** \\ \hline _ALB_ & 1.464 (1.051–2.041) & 0.024 & 1.413 (1.005–1.987) & 0.047 \\ _BNIP3_ & 1.363 (0.979–1.899) & 0.047 & 1.049 (0.737–1.492) & 0.022 \\ _DPEP1_ & 1.296 (0.933–1.800) & 0.012 & 1.568 (1.076–2.284) & 0.019 \\ _GLS2_ & 0.821 (0.591–1.140) & 0.039 & 1.286 (0.908–1.823) & 0.012 \\ _MCG3_ & 1.454 (1.045–2.023) & 0.026 & 1.573 (1.095–2.259) & 0.026 \\ _PDK4_ & 1.825 (1.302–2.559) & \textless{}0.001 & 1.505 (1.077–2.102) & 0.014 \\ _TF_ & 1.530 (1.098–2.131) & 0.012 & 1.300 (0.919–1.837) & 0.038 \\ _TSC22D3_ & 1.407 (1.011–1.959) & 0.043 & 1.017 (0.695–1.487) & 0.023 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table}
Table 2: Univariate and multivariate regression analysis of the correlation between overall survival of GC patients and DE-FRGs identified by EP-WGCNA (\(p\)-value \(<\) 0.05).  
Figure 2: Relationship between P-FRGs identified by EP-WGCNA-Cox and overall survival of GC patients. Blue represents the low expression group and red represents the high expression group. (**A**) _ALB_. (**B**) _BNIP3_. (**C**) _DPEP1_. (**D**) _GLS2_. (**E**) _MEG3_. (**F**) _PDK4_. (**G**) _TF_. (**H**) _TSC22D3_.