Table 2.
Distribution of Colorectal Cancer Cases according to the Amount of Bifidobacterium DNA, and Tumor Differentiation, Extent of Signet Ring Cells, or Extent of Extracellular Mucin
| Characteristic | All cases (n = 1313) | Amount of Bifidobacterium DNA in colorectal cancer tissue |
P value∗ | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Negative (n = 920) | Low (n = 197) | High (n = 196) | |||
| Tumor differentiation | 0.25 | ||||
| Well to moderate | 1175 (90) | 832 (91) | 172 (88) | 171 (87) | |
| Poor | 133 (10) | 85 (9.3) | 23 (12) | 25 (13) | |
| Extent of signet ring cells | 0.002 | ||||
| 0 | 1114 (87) | 799 (89) | 164 (87) | 151 (80) | |
| 1–50 | 145 (11) | 94 (10) | 17 (9.0) | 34 (18) | |
| ≥51 | 19 (1.5) | 9 (1.0) | 7 (3.7) | 3 (1.6) | |
| Extent of extracellular mucin (%) | 0.30 | ||||
| 0 | 757 (59) | 535 (59) | 119 (63) | 103 (55) | |
| 1–50 | 369 (29) | 260 (29) | 45 (24) | 64 (34) | |
| ≥51 | 153 (12) | 107 (12) | 25 (13) | 21 (11) | |
Data are given as n (percentage) of each group unless otherwise indicated. Percentage indicates the proportion of patients with a specific clinical, pathologic, or molecular characteristic among all patients or in strata of the amount of Bifidobacterium DNA in colorectal cancer tissue.
To assess associations between the ordinal categories (negative, low, and high) of the amount of Bifidobacterium DNA in colorectal cancer tissue and categorical data, the χ2 test was performed (except for the extent of signet ring cells, for which Fisher's exact test was used). Two-sided α level was set at 0.005.