Table 1.

Comparison of CTC and cCAF status to clinico-pathological features and response to treatment in breast cancer patients. F indicates Fisher’s exact test, otherwise Chi-squared test was performed. Statistically significant results are marked in bold. Due to missing data, not all numbers sum up to 210.

		CTC			cCAF
Variable	Total n	CTC neg	CTC pos	p-Value	cCAF neg	cCAF pos	p-Value
Age
<50	84 (40%)	68 (44.7%)	16 (27.6%)	0.02	83 (40.9%)	1 (14.3%)	0.25 F
≥50	126 (60%)	84 (55.3%)	42 (72.4%)		120 (59.1%)	6 (85.75)
cT stage
cT1-2	126 (71.6%)	99 (72.8%)	27 (67.5%)	0.51	125 (71.8%)	1 (50%)	0.49 F
cT3-4	50 (28.4%)	37 (27.2%)	13 (32.5%)		49 (28.2%)	1 (50%)
cN stage
cN0	70 (40.2%)	55 (41%)	15 (37.5%)	0.69	70 (40.7%)	0 (0%)	0.52 F
cN1	104 (59.8%)	79 (59%)	25 (62.5%)		102 (59.3%)	2 (100%)
M stage
M0	184 (87.6%)	138 (90.8%)	46 (79.3%)	0.02	180 (88.7%)	4 (57.1%)	0.04 F
M1	26 (12.4%)	14 (9.2%)	12 (20.7%)		23 (11.3%)	3 (42.9%)
Grading
1	11 (5.7%)	8 (5.5%)	3 (6.3%)	0.58	11 (5.8%)	0 (0%)	0.54
2	93 (48.2%)	67 (46.2%)	26 (54.2%)		90 (47.6%)	3 (75%)
3	89 (46.1%)	70 (48.3%)	19 (39.6%)		88 (46.6%)	1 (25%)
Molecular type
Luminal A	21 (10.2%)	12 (8%)	9 (16.1%)	0.13	20 (10.1%)	1 (14.3%)	0.25
Luminal B HER2−	65 (31.6%)	51 (34%)	14 (25%)		65 (32.7%)	0 (0%)
Luminal B HER2+	49 (23.8%)	36 (24%)	13 (23.2%)		46 (23.1%)	3 (42.9%)
Non-luminal HER2+	22 (10.7%)	19 (12.7%)	3 (5.4%)		22 (11.1%)	0 (0%)
Triple-negative	49 (23.8%)	32 (21.3%)	17 (30.4%)		46 (23.1%)	3 (42.9%)
Response to treatment
Stable disease	21 (51.1%)	15 (13.6%)	6 (20.7%)	0.62	21 (15.2%)	0 (0%)	0.8
Complete response	39 28.1%)	30 (27.3%)	9 (31%)		39 (28.3%)	0 (0%)
Partial response	69 (49.6%)	56 (50.9%)	13 (44.8%)		68 (49.3%)	1 (100%)
Progressive disease	10 (7.2%)	9 (8.2%)	1 (3.4%)		10 (7.2%)	0 (0%)