Table I.

Correlation between hsa_circ_IPCEF1 expression and clinicopathological characteristics in 57 patients with papillary thyroid carcinoma.

Characteristics	Number of patients (%)	Relative expression	P-value
Age (years)
<45	26 (45.6)	0.75±0.16	0.1933
≥45	31 (54.4)	0.52±0.09
Sex
Male	17 (29.8)	0.76±0.20	0.1571
Female	40 (70.2)	0.45±0.11
Tumor size (cm)
<2	49 (86.0)	0.70±0.14	0.1246
≥2	8 (14.0)	0.17±0.08
TNM stage
I–II	42 (73.7)	0.77±0.20	0.1515
III–IV	15 (26.3)	0.28±0.11
Multifocality
Yes	30 (52.6)	0.61±0.09	0.4660
No	27 (47.4)	0.48±0.16
Extrathyroidal extension
Yes	12 (21.1)	0.69±0.26	0.8503
No	45 (78.9)	0.63±0.18
LNM
Yes	32 (56.1)	0.82±0.13	<0.001a
No	25 (43.9)	0.25±0.05

^aP<0.001. circ, circular RNA; TNM, tumor-node-metastasis; LNM, lymph node metastasis.