Table 1.

Sample exclusion criteria

	Number excluded	Percent excluded	Remaining samples
Samples extracted	N/A	0	354
Insufficient RNA	-38	10.7%	316
Incomplete sample data	-4	1.1%	312
Unsatisfactory qPCR	-21	5.9%	291
Pathologically ineligble	-10	2.8%	281
Clinically ineligble	-11	3.1%	270
Total in final dataset		76.3%	270

Samples were excluded on the basis of several different categories. Various acceptance criteria were applied to the dataset. The table shows how many samples were excluded from the final dataset based on each category. There were 354 samples extracted and the final evaluable data set was 270.