YKL-40 tissue expression and plasma levels in patients with ovarian cancer

BMC Cancer

Table 1 Clinical characteristics and YKL-40 expression in tumor tissue and plasma YKL-40 levels from patients diagnosed with borderline ovarian tumor#

Characteristic		YKL-40 protein expression (N = 181)		Plasma YKL-40 (μg/l) (N = 19)
	N (%)	Median (range)	N (%)	Median (range)
FIGO stage:
I	160 (88)	5 (0–90)	19 (100)	42 (20–180)
II	5 (3)	5 (0–30)
III	16 (9)	7.5 (0–30)
Histological type of tumor:
Cystadenoma (NOS), borderline	14 (8)	7.5 (5–20)	2 (10)	39 (38–40)
Serous cystadenoma, borderline	95 (52)	5 (0–80)	6 (32)	42 (31–142)
Mucinous cystadenoma, borderline	69 (38)	5 (0–90)	11 (58)	37 (20–180)
Endometroid cystadenoma, borderline	3 (2)	5 (5–40)

# Scoring of YKL-40 expression was based on the proportion of cells in a given tumor specimen exhibiting distinct cytoplasmic immunopositivity as well as intensity of staining percentage scale: 0, 5, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, and 100. The YKL-40 scoring results was transformed into a four-tiered scale: 1 = negative; 2 = 5% positive tumor cells; 3 = 10% positive tumor cells and 4 = 20% or more positive tumor cells.

ISSN: 1471-2407