Fig. 5: Associations of thymic health with metabolism, lifestyle and inflammation in the FHS.

a, Associations of metabolically relevant variables with thymic health, stratified by sex with female participants shown in green and male participants in purple. b, Respective associations adjusted for sex, age and smoking status. c, Associations of smoking-related factors and weekly consumption of alcoholic beverages with thymic health adjusted for sex and age. d, Association of Olink-based plasma protein levels with thymic health, adjusted for sex, age and smoking status (n = 317). In a, box plots show the median (centre line), interquartile range (25th–75th percentiles; box), and whiskers extending to the minimum and maximum values within 1.5× the interquartile range. Statistical comparisons between male and female participants were performed using two-sided Wilcoxon rank sum tests. Patient counts shown in a correspond to the number (Count) of patients depicted in the respective rows of b. In b and c forest plots, the box centres represent the estimated regression coefficients, and the whiskers their corresponding 95% CI. The shaded box size is for visualization only and does not encode statistical weight. Statistical significance of individual coefficients was evaluated using two-sided t-tests. In a–c no adjustment for multiple comparisons was applied. In d, effect size, in s.d. units, is plotted against false discovery rate (FDR) of the linear regression association of rank-based inverse-normal transformed Olink inflammatory proteins with thymic health. The FDRs were computed across 68 proteins using the two-sided regression P values using the Benjamini and Hochberg method for multiple comparisons. Proteins with FDR < 0.1 (corresponding to −log₁₀[FDR] > 1) were considered statistically significant. HT-S1, hypertension stage 1; HT-S2, hypertension stage 2; LDL, low-density lipoprotein.