Fig. 1

The cytokines with the highest variable importance when distinguishing patient groups from each other. Variable importance is given by the mean decrease in the Gini coefficient, which represents the contribution of each cytokine to the homogeneity of the results of the random forests. The concentrations of all studied cytokines in the CSF of patient groups (LNB, TBE, MS, and non-LNB controls) were compared. Sixteen best cytokines to distinguish all groups from each other are presented in the figure in descending order. The higher the importance is, the better the respective cytokine is able to discriminate the groups