Decreased expression of Neurensin-2 correlates with poor prognosis in hepatocellular carcinoma

Table 1 Correlations between NRSN2 expression and clinicopathologic variables of 110 cases of HCC

Clinicopathologic variables	n	NRSN2 expression		χ2	P-value
		Negative	Positive
All cases	110	32	78
Age				0.037	0.848
< 50	60	43	17
≥ 50	50	35	15
Gender				0.341	0.559
Female	14	9	5
Male	96	69	27
Tumor size (cm)				7.678	0.006a
< 5	37	20	17
≥ 5	73	58	15
Histological differentiation				0.879	0.258
Well	18	12	6
Moderate	69	49	20
Poor	23	17	5
Liver cirrhosis				0.176	0.675
Yes	55	38	17
No	55	40	15
Metastasis				0.152	0.697
Yes	16	12	4
No	94	66	28
HBsAg status				3.400	0.065
Positive	96	71	25
Negative	14	7	7
Serum AFP (μg/L)				0.360	0.549
Positive (≥ 25)	80	58	22
Negative (< 25)	30	20	10

^aP < 0.05. NRSN2: Neurensin-2; HCC: Hepatocellular carcinoma.

Table 2 Overall survival Cox regression analysis

Variables	Relative risk (95% CI)	P-value
Univariate
Gender	0.674 (0.308-1.474)	0.320
Age	0.689 (0.423-1.123)	0.133
Tumor size	1.752 (1.028-2.986)	0.037a
Histological differentiation	1.728 (0.855-3.495)	0.083
Liver cirrhosis	1.689 (1.047-2.725)	0.030a
HBsAg	1.488 (0.680-3.252)	0.316
Serum AFP	1.990 (1.105-3.585)	0.019a
Metastasis	1.368 (0.733-2.554)	0.323
NRSN2	0.470 (0.265-0.836)	0.008a
Multivariate
Liver cirrhosis	1.739 (1.076-2.808)	0.024a
Serum AFP	1.957 (1.086-3.528)	0.025a
NRSN2	0.481 (0.270-0.854)	0.013a

^aP < 0.05.