Tumoral and stromal expression of MMP-2, MMP-9, MMP-14, TIMP-1, TIMP-2, and VEGF-A in cervical cancer patient survival: a competing risk analysis

Table 3 Competing risk survival analysis according to clinical characteristics, tumor stage and protein expression*

Variables ^∆	Cause-specific Cox regression
Univariate analysis (n = 64)	RRª	95%CI	p-value
Age ^b (> 44 vs. ≤44 years)	9.46	1.21–74.05	0.03
Tumor stage (II-IV vs. I)	15.17	0.68–6.70	< 0.001
Histopathological grade (G2-G3 vs. G1)	0.51	0.01–0.29	0.19
MMP-2 tumor	–	–	< 0.000^ß
MMP-2 stroma	3.91	1.17–13.02	0.03
MMP-9 tumor	0.19	0.04–0.90	0.04
MMP-9 stroma	0.19	0.05–0.65	0.01
MMP-14 tumor	3.57	0.43–29.90	0.24
MMP-14 stroma	7.11	0.88–57.58	0.07
TIMP-1 tumor	0.45	0.06–3.56	0.45
TIMP-1 stroma	2.30	0.67–7.89	0.19
TIMP-2 tumor	3.19	0.90–11.55	0.07
TIMP-2 stroma	8.67	1.15–65.27	0.04
VEGF-A tumor	3.23	0.90–11.55	0.07
VEGF-A stroma	3.77	0.80–117.73	0.09

*The expression was analyzed based on the percentage of stained cells and categorized by the ROC curve; ^∆The first category is the reference ^aRR = relative risk. ^ß All the women showing higher expressions of tumoral MMP-2 entered died from the disease before the analysis began, so the relative risk could not be assessed

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