Twist Expression in Circulating Hepatocellular Carcinoma Cells Predicts Metastasis and Prognoses

Table 2

Correlation between the positive ratios of CTCs/Twist+ CTCs and clinicohistopathological risk factors in the 80 HCC patients.

Clinical variable	CTCs		Twist+ CTCs
		P value		P value
Age	3.682	0.159	3.539	0.17
Gender	0.049	0.826	0.059	0.808
Cirrhosis	3.119	0.077	11.091	0.00
AFP	4.188	0.242	8.724	0.03
Child-Pugh class	0.788	0.674	1.926	0.382
Tumor number	4.219	0.04	12.321	<0.00
Tumor size	4.120	0.127	8.021	0.01
Portal vein tumor thrombus	4.267	0.03	11.483	0.00
TNM staging	3.890	0.274	8.435	0.03

Note.  P values are from chi-squared test or Fisher’s exact test. is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed). is significant at the 0.001 level (2-tailed). American Joint Committee on Cancer TNM Staging for Liver Tumors (7th edition, 2010, ISBN 0387884408).
AFP: alpha-fetoprotein; HCC: hepatocellular carcinoma; CTCs: circulating tumor cells.