Prognostic significance of preoperative and postoperative CK19 and CEA mRNA levels in peripheral blood of patients with gastric cardia cancer

Table 1 Correlation between the preoperative and postoperative cytokeratin 19 mRNA levels and the clinicopathological features of 129 patients with gastric cardia cancer n (%)

Clinicopathological feature	Cases	CK19 mRNA level (pre-)		χ2 test		CK19 mRNA level (post-)		χ2 test
		Low	High	χ2	P value	Low	High	χ2	P value
Gender				1.484	0.223			1.663	0.197
Male	102	47 (46.1)	55 (53.9)			50 (49.0)	52 (51.0)
Female	27	16 (59.3)	11 (40.7)			17 (63.0)	10 (37.0)
Age (yr)				0.411	0.521			0.052	0.820
≤ 60	59	27 (45.8)	32 (54.2)			30 (50.8)	29 (49.2)
> 60	70	36 (51.4)	34 (48.6)			37 (52.9)	33 (47.1)
Tumor size (cm)				6.928	0.008			3.250	0.071
≤ 4	75	44 (58.7)	31 (41.3)			44 (58.7)	31 (41.3)
> 4	54	19 (35.2)	35 (64.8)			23 (42.6)	31 (57.4)
Histological grade				0.474	0.491			0.030	0.861
Well/moderately differentiated	99	50 (50.5)	49 (49.5)			51 (51.5)	48 (48.5)
Poorly differentiated/undifferentiated	30	13 (43.3)	17 (6.7)			16 (53.3)	14 (46.7)
Depth of tumor invasion				3.088	0.079			3.015	0.082
T1-T2	34	21 (61.8)	13 (38.2)			22 (64.7)	12 (35.3)
T3-T4	95	42 (44.2)	53 (55.8)			45 (47.4)	50 (52.6)
Lymph node status				4.528	0.033			3.913	0.048
Negative	78	44 (56.4)	34 (43.6)			46 (59.0)	32 (41.0)
Positive	51	19 (37.3)	32 (62.7)			21 (41.2)	30 (58.8)
TNM stage				8.861	0.012			2.848	0.241
I	11	9 (81.8)	2 (18.2)			7 (63.6)	4 (36.4)
II	75	39 (52.0)	36 (48.0)			42 (56.0)	33 (44.0)
III	43	15 (34.9)	28 (65.1)			18 (41.9)	25 (58.1)

CK19: Cytokeratin 19.