Table 1. ESCC patients characteristics and plasma miR-25 concentrations.

Variables	Patients (n=105)	Plasma miR-25 (mean, amol μl−1)a	P-valuea
Age, years
<65	49 (47%)	0.5801	0.1176
65⩽	56 (53%)	0.4479
Sex
Male	86 (82%)	0.5327	0.1887
Female	19 (18%)	0.4050
Venous invasionb
v0	67 (64%)	0.5669	0.1857
v1–2	30 (29%)	0.3926
v3	8 (8%)	0.4688
Lymphatic invasionb
ly0	60 (57%)	0.6409	0.0110
ly1–2	30 (29%)	0.3301
ly3	15 (14%)	0.3439
T-stageb
Tis	5 (5%)	1.1039	0.0115
T1	37 (35%)	0.6035
T2	13 (12%)	0.5216
T3	41 (39%)	0.4285
T4	9 (9%)	0.1454
N-stageb
N0	43 (41%)	0.4827	0.2215
N1	33 (31%)	0.6256
N2	19 (18%)	0.3607
N3	11 (10%)	0.5109
Stageb
0	2 (1%)	0.9245	0.0698
I	28 (27%)	0.4965
II	28 (27%)	0.7079
III	37 (35%)	0.3790
IV	11 (10%)	0.3904

Abbreviations: ESCC=oesophageal squamous cell carcinoma; miR-25=microRNA 25. P-value was considered significant at 0.05. NOTE: Significant values are in boldface type.

^aThe Mann–Whitney U-test and Kruskal–Wallis H-test were performed to compare plasma miRNA concentrations.

^bTNM classification.