Fig. 3

Correlation analysis of DELs with clinicopathologic characteristics of HCC. a The relative expression of DELs in 14 HCC patients with tumor size no larger than 5 cm vs. 7 patients with tumor size greater than 5 cm. The expression levels of DELs are normalized by the paired adjacent normal samples as fold changes and log2 transformed (P < 0.05, similarly hereinafter). b The relative expression of DELs in 11 patients with tumor histologic differentiation grade of well (W) or moderate (M) vs 10 with poor (P) differentiation grade. c The relative expression of DELs in 15 patients without portal vein tumor thrombosis (PVTT) and 6 patients with PVTT. d The relative expression of DELs in 9 HCC patients with negative immunohistochemistry staining of alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) in tumor tissues and 12 with positive staining. e The relative expression of DELs in 14 HCC patients with serum AFP level no more than 400 ng/ml, and 7 with more than 400 ng/ml. f The linear analysis of the relative expression of NONHSAT122051 and serum AFP concentration (r = 0.7065, P = 0.0005)