Rationales for the Use of Cancer Stem Cells Markers in the Staging of Papillary Thyroid Carcinoma

Table 2

Relative mRNA levels of ALDH1A1, CD44, OCT3/4,and ABCG2 genes in different stages of papillary thyroid carcinoma compared with benign thyroid fibroadenoma detected by quantitative real-time PCR.

Groups	ALDH1A1	CD44	OCT3/4	ABCG2
Benign (n=11)	1.51±0.13 d	1.75±0.12 d	1.10±0.16 d	1.66±0.25 d
Stage 1 (n=25)	3.15±0.19 c	3.67±0.10 c	3.90±0.23 c	4.24±0.25 c
Stage 2 (n=8)	5.71±0.82 b	6.61±0.28 b	6.15±0.50 b	7.66±0.20 b
Stage 3 (n=6)	14.77±1.23 a	12.29±0.65 a	10.73±0.52 a	13.23±0.6 a
LSD	1.518	0.716	0.9991	1.0072

A, b, c, and d symbols represent significant differences between stages for each gene at P> 0.05 (mean ± SE).