Table 1.

Differences in immunostaining prevalence between pigmented lesion categories: significance testing

Diagnostic categorya	Diagnostic category	Significance level (P)b
		p16	pCHEK2	p-p53	p21	Nucleolin
BCN	BIN	NS	NS	NS	NS	<0.01
BCN	DN	NS	NS	NS	NS	NS
BCN	MIS	NS	NS	NS	<0.05	NS
BCN	MIV	NS	NS	<0.01	<0.01	<0.05
BCN	VGP	<0.01	<0.05	<0.001	<0.01	<0.01
BIN	DN	<0.05	NS	NS	NS	NS
BIN	MIS	<0.05	<0.01	<0.05	<0.01	NS
BIN	MIV	NS	NS	<0.001	<0.001	NS
BIN	VGP	<0.001	NS	<0.001	<0.01	NS
DN	MIS	NS	<0.01	NS	NS	NS
DN	MIV	NS	NS	<0.01	<0.05	NS
DN	VGP	<0.05	NS	<0.01	<0.05	NS
MIS	MIV	NS	<0.05	<0.05	NS	NS
MIS	VGP	<0.05	<0.001	<0.05	NS	NS
MIV	VGP	<0.01	NS	NS	NS	NS
Overall Kruskal–Wallis significancec		0.0002	0.0018	<0.0001	<0.0001	0.0018
Correlation coefficient (r)d		−0.48	0.196	0.647	0.528	0.268
Significance of r		1.8 × 10−5	NS	<10−6	3 × 10−6	0.022

^aCategories are as in the text: BCN, benign cellular nevus; BIN, benign intradermal nevus; DN, dysplastic nevus; MIS, melanoma in situ, epidermal-only RGP; MIV, RGP melanoma with microinvasion; VGP, vertical growth phase.

^bSignificance levels for all pairwise comparisons between lesion categories in prevalence of immunostaining for each marker (Figure 1), by the Kruskal–Wallis test (Siegel and Castellan, 1998). Significant differences are shown in boldface. NS, not significant.

^cOverall Kruskal–Wallis significance per marker is the probability of no difference in prevalence between any categories.

^dSpearman's correlation coefficient (r) between prevalence and progression, and its significance (Siegel and Castellan, 1998) are shown per marker.