Table 3. Clinicopathologic characteristics of the study samples.

characteristics	ESCC patients	Healthy controls
No. of subjects	62	62
Age (mean, range)	62, 46–78	60, 45–74
BMI (mean, range)	22.1, 16.4–30.4	21.6, 16.7–29.6
Gender	male	male
Race	Chinese	Chinese
Cancer stage
Early stage (T1–2, without metastases)	22 (T1: 7, T2: 15)	—
Advanced stage (T3–4, with metastases)	40 (T3: 19, T4: 21)	—