Table I.

Characteristics of the patients with lung adenocarcinoma and healthy controls.

Characteristics	Patients	Healthy controls
Gender
Male	27	24
Female	13	11
Age (years)
Median	53	54
Range	36–77	32–76
Tumor grade
Well/moderate	26
Poor	14
Tumor stage
T1	19
T2	13
T3	0
T4	8
Node status
N0	21
N1	9
N2	7
N3	3
Metastasis
M0	34
M1a/b	6
TNM stage
I	16
II	10
III	8
IV	6

All patients were staged according to the 7th edition of the tumor, node, and metastasis (TNM) classification for lung cancer.