Table 7 Correlations of methylation levels of the promoter region of hTERT gene with baseline characteristics of patients in the recurrence and non-recurrence groups
Characteristic | Non-recurrence group | Recurrence group | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|  | Hypomethylation (%) | Hypermethylation (%) | P | Hypomethylation (%) (n = 22) | Hypomethylation (%) (n = 53) | P |
Tumor size | ||||||
 <20 mm | 112 (70.0) | 45 (58.4) | 0.078 | 12 (54.5) | 19 (35.8) |  |
 ≥20 mm | 48 (30.0) | 32 (41.6) |  | 10 (45.5) | 34 (64.2) | 0.134 |
Multicentricity | ||||||
 Yes | 102 (63.8) | 41 (53.2) | 0.122 | 9 (40.9) | 27 (50.9) |  |
 No | 58 (36.3) | 36 (46.8) |  | 13 (59.1) | 26 (49.1) | 0.428 |
Extrathyroidal invasion | ||||||
 Yes | 57 (35.6) | 31 (40.3) | 0.489 | 8 (36.4) | 25 (47.2) | 0.391 |
 No | 103 (64.4) | 46 (59.7) |  | 14 (63.6) | 28 (52.8) |  |
Lymph node metastasis | ||||||
 Yes | 29 (18.1) | 15 (19.5) | 0.802 | 7 (31.8) | 41 (77.4) | <0.001 |
 No | 131 (81.9) | 62 (80.5) |  | 15 (68.2) | 12 (22.6) |  |
Pathological type | ||||||
 Papillary thyroid carcinoma | 147 (91.9) | 73 (94.8) | 0.707 | 12 (54.5) | 25 (47.2) |  |
 Follicular thyroid carcinoma | 7 (4.4) | 3 (3.9) |  | 2 (9.1) | 5 (9.4) |  |
 Medullary thyroid carcinoma | 4 (2.5) | 1 (1.3) |  | 2 (9.1) | 8 (15.1) |  |
 Undifferentiated carcinoma | 2 (1.3) | 0 (0.0) |  | 6 (27.3) | 15 (28.3) | 0.897 |
Tumor stage | ||||||
 I + II | 135 (84.4) | 64 (83.1) | 0.805 | 14 (63.6) | 16 (30.2) |  |
 III + IV | 25 (15.6) | 13 (16.9) |  | 8 (36.4) | 37 (69.8) | 0.007 |