Table II.

Association between Beclin-1 and LC3-II protein expression levels and clinicopathological characteristics of papillary thyroid carcinoma.

		Beclin-1				LC3-II
Variables	Cases	Negative	Positive	χ2	P-value	Negative	Positive	χ2	P-value
Age, years				3.766	0.067			0.004	0.948
<45	17	14	3			12	5
≥45	33	18	15			23	10
Gender				0.001	0.979			0.019	1.000
Male	14	9	5			10	4
Female	36	23	13			25	11
Tumor size, cm				2.335	0.126			2.068	0.215
<1	29	16	13			18	11
≥1	21	16	5			17	4
Tumor number				3.979	0.056			0.680	0.507
Single	36	20	16			24	12
Multiple	14	12	2			11	3
TNM stage				1.666	0.398			3.488	0.087
I and II	43	26	17			28	15
III and IV	7	6	1			7	0
Lymph node involvement				5.640	0.026			6.320	0.019
Present	16	14	2			15	1
Absent	34	18	16			20	14

LC3-II, microtubule-associated protein 1 light chain 3; PTC, papillary thyroid carcinoma; TNM, tumor-node-metastasis.