Table 2.

MiRNA levels in the PTC, benign nodule, and the healthy control groups in the validation set by qRT-PCR^a.

miRNA	PTC (n = 64)	Benign nodule (n = 55)	Healthy control (n = 57)	P valueb	P valuec	P valued
miR-222-3p	0.415 ± 0.030	0.390 ± 0.026	0.290 ± 0.020	0.536	<0.001	<0.01
miR-17-5p	1.590 ± 0.139	1.771 ± 0.159	1.152 ± 0.086	0.391	<0.05	<0.001
miR-451a	0.964 ± 0.060	0.862 ± 0.045	0.639 ± 0.030	0.188	<0.001	<0.001
miR-146a-5p	1.627 ± 0.082	1.816 ± 0.094	2.065 ± 0.113	0.128	<0.01	0.092
miR-132-3p	1.442 ± 0.067	1.566 ± 0.086	2.052 ± 0.104	0.247	<0.001	<0.001
miR-183-3p	0.527 ± 0.042	0.500 ± 0.033	0.733 ± 0.035	0.619	<0.001	<0.001

PTC: papillary thyroid cancer. ^aThe relative contents of miRNAs are normalized to let-7d/g/i and presented as the mean ± SEM. ^bDifference between the PTC group and the benign nodule group. ^cDifference between the PTC group and the healthy control group. ^dDifference between the benign nodule group and the healthy control group.