Fig. 2

DNA methylation levels in tumours of patients without and with epithelial circulating tumour cells for ADAM23, TWIST1 and SNAI2 genes. The length of the boxes is the interquartile range (IQR) that represents values between the 75th and 25th percentiles. The circle (○) labelled outliers (values more than 1.5 IQRs but less than 3 IQRs from the end of the box). Values more than three IQRs, extremes, are depicted by asterisk (*).The horizontal line represents median. Significance level is regarded as P < 0.05. Abbreviations: epi CTC, epithelial circulating tumour cells