Table 1.

Correlation of circRFWD3 in HNSCC with clinicopathological factors including patients and tumor characteristics.

Characteristics	Number of Cases	CircRFWD3 (Low)	CircRFWD3 (High)	p valuea
Age at surgery
≤60 years	94	33	61
60 years	120	44	76	0.932
Gender
Male	154	46	108
Female	60	31	29	0.819
Smoking
No	102	43	59
Yes	112	34	78	0.292
Alcohol consumption
No	105	44	61
Yes	109	33	76	0.340
Differentiation
High	136	56	80
Moderate	56	17	39
Poor	22	4	18
High vs. moderate + poor				0.085
Tumor stage
T1	48	14	34
T2	103	42	61
T3	20	8	12
T4	43	13	30
T1-2 vs. T3-4				0.105
Clinical TNM stage
I	32	10	22
II	70	31	39
III	67	21	46
IV	45	15	30
I–III vs IV				0.333
Lymph node metastasis
No	137	56	81
Unilateral	70	20	50
Bilateral	7	1	6
No vs. Unilateral + Bilateral				0.013

^aP values were derived using the Spearman rank correlation coefficient test; all statistical tests are two-sided.

The expression levels of circRFWD3 were significantly correlated with lymph node metastasis (P = 0.013) of HNSCC according to our clinical cohort (214 cases of HNSCC).