Table 2.

TFAP2B/COX-2 correlated with clinicopathological characteristics in thyroid cancer

Variable	TFAP2B			P	COX-2			P
	Low	Medium	High		Low	Medium	High
Age
≤55	83	76	38	0.490	52	84	61	0.213
>55	19	22	14		12	19	24
Gender
Male	37	35	17	0.903	23	37	29	0.960
Female	65	63	35		41	66	56
T classification
I	60	36	11	0.000	33	44	30	0.666
II	31	39	19		19	37	33
III	9	17	15		9	16	16
IV	2	6	7		3	6	6
N classification
N0	45	29	13	0.026	29	25	33	0.012
Nx	57	69	39		35	78	52
M classification
M0	102	95	49	0.050	63	100	83	0.676
M1	0	2	3		1	3	1
Multifocal thyroid cancer
Yes	21	18	20	0.015	8	24	27	0.023
No	81	80	32		56	79	58
Extrathyroidal extension
Yes	12	19	13	0.100	7	14	23	0.015
No	90	79	39		57	89	62
Thyroid cancer-assisted HT
Yes	19	20	12	0.808	11	27	13	0.140
No	83	78	40		53	76	72
Recurrence
Yes	54	53	30	0.853	32	60	45	0.552
No	48	45	22		32	43	40

HT Hashimoto’s thyroiditis

High TFAP2B/COX-2 expression levels were associated with multifocal thyroid cancer and N stage (P < 0.05). TFAP2B expression was also significantly associated with T/M staging (P < 0.05). In contrast to TFAP2B, COX-2 expression was significantly associated with extrathyroidal extension (P < 0.05). As the results are shown above, we found that TFAP2B/COX-2 expression is likely connected with invasion and metastasis in thyroid cancer

Bold values indicated statistic significance