Table 2.
Comparison of the Counts and Positive Rate of E-CTCs in Different Clinical Feature Groups
| E-CTC Counts | Positive Rate of E-CTCs (%) | P-value | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 ± SD |
T-test | Median | Mann–Whitney | |||
| Age | 0.302 | 0.269 | ||||
| ≤63 | 1.44 ± 1.999 | 68.8 | ||||
| >63 | 0.79 ± 1.251 | 42.9 | ||||
| Sex | 0.191 | 0.484 | ||||
| Male | 0.78 ± 1.000 | 50 | ||||
| Female | 1.57 ± 2.209 | 64.3 | ||||
| Smoking | 0.147 | 0.460 | ||||
| No | 8.46 ± 6.716 | 46.2 | ||||
| Yes | 11.06 ± 9.705 | 64.7 | ||||
| Pathological type | 0.317 | 0.530 | ||||
| ADC | 1.13 ± 1.302 | 45.5 | ||||
| SCC | 0.73 ± 0.905 | 66.7 | ||||
| Others | 2.25 ± 3.862 | 50 | ||||
| TNM stage | 0.219 | 0.426 | ||||
| I-II | 0.69 ± 0.855 | 45.5 | ||||
| III-IV | 1.47 ± 2.095 | 66.7 | ||||
| Tumor size stage | 0.374 | 0.360 | ||||
| T1-T2 | 1 (0~4) | 62.5 | ||||
| T3-T4 | 0 (0~8) | 33.3 | ||||
| Lymph node metastasis | 0.610 | 57.1 | >0.999 | |||
| No | 1 (0~4) | 55.6 | ||||
| Yes | 1 (0~8) | |||||
| Distant metastasis | 0.887 | >0.999 | ||||
| No | 1 (0~4) | 60 | ||||
| Yes | 0 (0~8) | 55 | ||||
Notes: The positive rate of E-CTCs is referred to the proportion of the CTC cells with positive epithelial marker signals (epithelial marker+, mesenchymal marker-, CD45-, and DAPI+) by immunofluorescence among the total number of CTC cells.
Abbreviations: E-CTCs, epithelial circulating tumor cells; ADC, adenocarcinoma; SCC, squamous cell carcinoma; TNM, tumor-node-metastasis.