Fig. 1

Analysis pipeline of expression values from microarrays. The expression values of GSE100927 and GSE28829 were analysed according to the pipeline. The atheromatous plaques in GSE100927 and GSE28829 were divided into a cluster with low immune scores (ImmuneScoreL cluster) and a cluster with high immune scores (ImmuneScoreH cluster) according to the degree of immune infiltration. The distribution of clinically proven early-stage and advanced-stage carotid plaques in GSE28829 was statistically significant (p < 0.001), and the distribution of atheromatous plaques from different peripheral arteries in GSE100927 was statistically significant (p < 0.001)