Expression of connective tissue growth factor in tumor tissues is an independent predictor of poor prognosis in patients with gastric cancer

Table 1 Association between CTGF expression and clinicopathologic factors

Factors	Cases	CTGF expression		P value1
		Low expression	High expression
Age (yr)				0.628
< 60	68	37	31
≥ 60	54	27	27
Sex				0.251
Male	88	49	39
Female	34	15	19
Tumor size (cm)				0.555
< 5	56	31	25
≥ 5	66	33	33
Differentiation				0.014
Well	19	6	13
Moderate	32	13	19
Poor	71	45	26
Lauren type				0.045
Intestinal type	40	15	25
Diffuse type	64	40	24
Mixed type	18	9	9
TNM stage				0.391
I	18	11	7
II	24	15	9
III	46	20	26
IV	34	18	16
Lymph nodes metastasis				0.032
Absent	32	22	10
Present	90	42	48
Metastasis				0.821
Absent	104	55	49
Present	18	9	9

¹Pearson χ² test.

Table 2 Multivariate analysis of the prognostic impact of CTGF expression by Cox proportional hazard model with backward stepwise procedure

Variables	B	SE	RR (95% CI)	P
TNM stage				< 0.001
II vs I	1.162	0.792	3.197 (0.677-15.099)	0.142
III vsI	2.202	0.734	9.039 (2.143-38.136)	0.003
IV vs I	3.561	0.746	35.208 (8.165-151.830)	< 0.001
Differentiation				0.067
Moderate vs Well	0.771	0.381	2.162 (1.024-4.567)	0.043
Poor vs Well	0.929	0.414	2.533 (1.126-5.699)	0.025
CTGF expression
High vs Low	0.565	0.265	1.760 (1.047-2.958)	0.033

B: Coefficient; RR: Relative risk; CI: Confidence interval.