Midkine: A Novel Biomarker to Predict Malignancy in Patients with Nodular Thyroid Disease

Table 3

The relationship between SMK/NMK concentrations and fine needle aspiration cytology/histopathology results.

	SMK (median); (min–max)	Mean ± SD	95% CI	NMK (median); (min–max)	Mean ± SD	95% CI
Cytopathology
Benign ()	0.60 (0.30–4.97)	0.77 ± 0.65	0.62–0.93	0.52 (0.35–1.73)	0.55 ± 0.21	0.50–0.60
Suspicious/; malignant ()	1.37 (0.50–4.13)	1.47 ± 1.11	0.61–2.32	0.62 (0.43–1.50)	0.72 ± 0.31	0.48–0.96
	0.005	<0.001		0.015	0.005
Histopathology
Follicular adenoma/; nodular hyperplasia; ()	0.63 (0.30–4.13)	0.78 ± 0.71	0.50–1.06	0.55 (0.35–1.50)	0.55 ± 0.20	0.47–0.64
Differentiated thyroid; cancer ()	1.04 (0.48–1.53)	1.03 ± 0.42	0.58–1.47	0.57 (0.48–0.80)	0.59 ± 0.13	0.46–0.73
	0.066	<0.001		0.341	0.050