(A) Representative immunohistochemical staining of ATM and MRE11 in rectal cancer tissues. Bar = 200 μm. Staining for each protein was scored as high or low, as described in the Materials and Methods. (B) Overall survival according to combined protein expression levels of ATM and MRE11 was determined by Kaplan−Meier survival analyses and compared using the log-rank test. Patients with high combined protein expression levels of ATM and MRE11 in the TC (green line) showed significantly worse OS than those with low expression (blue line; P = 0.003). (C) Similarly, patients with high expression levels in the TC (green line) exhibited worse disease-free survival than those with low expression (blue line; P = 0.035). (D and E) When measured in the TP, no significant survival difference was seen between the high- and low-expression groups for overall survival (P = 0.208) or disease-free survival (P = 0.748).