Table 2.

The Association between relative expression of circ_0044234 in breast cancer and clinicopathological features of the patients

Characteristic	Subgroups	No. of patients (%)	Median (expression of circ….)	P-value
Age	< 50	54 (56.8%)	1.58	0.717
	≥ 50	41 (43.2%)	1.73
Tumor size	< 2	18 (19%)	1.88	0.845
	2–5	72 (75.8%)	1.59
	> 5	5 (5.2%)	1.49
Estrogen receptor	Positive	38 (40%)	2.54	0.0002
	Negative	57 (60%)	1.04
progesterone receptor	Positive	37 (38.9%)	2.60	0.0001
	Negative	58 (61.1%)	1.03
HER2	Positive	35 (36.8%)	2.03	0.142
	Negative	60 (63.2%)	1.41
Ki67a	High	47 (57.3)	0.62	< 0.0001
	Low	35 (42.7)	1.74
Histologic gradeb	G1	20 (21.5)	2.52	0.001
	G2	47 (50.5)	1.92
	G3	26 (28)	0.48
Lymph nodes metastasisc	Yes	36 (40)	1.07	0.030
	No	54 (60)	2.01
Histologic type of invasive carcinoma	IDC	68 (94.5%)	0.83	0.140
	ILC	4 (5.5%)	3.22

IDC invasive ductal carcinoma, ILC invasive lobular carcinoma, Bold values denote statistical significance at the p < 0.05 level

^aData on thirteen patients are lacking. A cut-off point of 25% of positive cells per field was used to distinguish between the categories of high (> 25%) and low (≤ 25%) Ki67 expression

^bData on five patients are lacking

^cData on two patients are lacking