Comparison of metabolic ratios of urinary estrogens between benign and malignant thyroid tumors in postmenopausal women

Table 2 Metabolic ratios of urinary estrogens between benign tumors and malignant Papillary Thyroid Carcinomas (PTCs) in postmenopausal women

Metabolic ratio (product/precursor)	Benign tumor (a) (n = 9)	Malignant PTCs			P-value²
		Stage I (b)	Stage III/IV (c)	P-value¹	a vs. b	a vs. c	b vs. c
		(n = 11)	(n = 7)	P-value¹	a vs. b	a vs. c	b vs. c
2-hydroxylase
2-OH-E1/E1	0.16 ± 0.14	0.13 ± 0.09	0.16 ± 0.15	0.991
2-OH-E2/E2	0.75 ± 0.40	0.38 ± 0.30	0.47 ± 0.29	0.070
4-hydroxylase
4-OH-E1/E1	0.10 ± 0.13	0.12 ± 0.09	0.15 ± 0.08	0.182
4-OH-E2/E2	0.64 ± 0.44	0.42 ± 0.28	0.40 ± 0.20	0.360
16α-hydroxylase
16α-OH-E1/E1	0.12 ± 0.09	0.26 ± 0.20	0.31 ± 0.20	0.052	0.095	0.012	0.659
E3/E2	2.16 ± 1.10	4.72 ± 3.28	6.66 ± 3.27	0.007	0.067	0.001	0.126
Methyltransferase
2-MeO-E1/2-OH-E1	1.43 ± 0.94	1.68 ± 1.00	1.66 ± 0.93	0.838
2-MeO-E2/2-OH-E2	6.35 ± 8.80	4.98 ± 5.47	3.55 ± 4.53	0.935
4-MeO-E1/4-OH-E1	3.23 ± 6.88	0.25 ± 0.18	0.58 ± 0.47	0.140
4-MeO-E2/4-OH-E2	4.02 ± 7.28	0.83 ± 0.57	1.20 ± 0.60	0.216
17β-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase
E2/E1	0.10 ± 0.08	0.23 ± 0.22	0.26 ± 0.08	0.013	0.046	0.002	0.285
E3/16α-OH-E1	1.75 ± 0.80	3.79 ± 1.80	6.15 ± 2.18	0.001	0.010	0.0001	0.044
2-/16α-hydroxylation
2-OH-E1/16α-OH-E1	2.05 ± 2.46	0.82 ± 0.74	0.64 ± 0.58	0.110
2-OH-E2/E3	0.50 ± 0.46	0.11 ± 0.14	0.08 ± 0.06	0.022	0.020	0.012	0.930

The metabolic ratios are presented as the metabolite-to-precursor ratio in each subject (mean ± SD).
Statistical significance was determined with nonparametric ¹Kruskal-Wallis and ²Mann-Whitney U tests to evaluate possible differences in the diagnostic factors.
The significant metabolic ratios with P < 0.05 in the Kruskal-Wallis test were then compared with the Mann–Whitney U test between 2 groups, including benign versus stage I PTC (a vs. b), benign versus stage III/IV PTC (a vs. c), and stage I versus stage III/IV PTC (b vs. c). A Bonferroni correction was applied to the post hoc analysis of the between-group comparisons performed for each variable and to set the significance level at 0.017.

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