Table 3.

Cancer stage and primary tumor size

A. lung cancer
lung cancer stage		OPNa	OPNb	OPNc
	correlation coefficient	0.127	0.172	0.185
	p-value	0.480	0.339	0.304
lung cancer size		OPNa	OPNb	OPNc
	correlation coefficient	-0.193	-0.508	-0.012
	p-value	0.259	0.002	0.942
B. breast cancer
breast cancer stage T		OPNa	OPNb	OPNc
	correlation coefficient	0.223	0.123	0.087
	p-value	0.084	0.343	0.507
breast cancer stage N		OPNa	OPNb	OPNc
	correlation coefficient	0.078	-0.084	0.161
	p-value	0.561	0.530	0.227
breast cancer size		OPNa	OPNb	OPNc
	correlation coefficient	-0.070	-0.090	0.111
	p-value	0.585	0.480	0.385

To determine the relationship between osteopontin splice variant levels and tumor stage or primary tumor size, Spearman’s correlation coefficient and its associated p-value were calculated. For lung cancers (A), stage I-IV was used (n = 10, 6, 11, 6 for I, II, II, IV). For breast cancers (B), stage T (n = 37, 16, 8, 2 for T1, T2, T3, T4) and N (n = 28, 20, 5, 7, 0 for N0, N1, N2, N3, N4) were applied to the analysis. Of note, the significant p-value is not reflective of a strong correlation. It indicates that the population correlation coefficient is different than zero with the degree of confidence given by the p-value.