Salivary DNA methylation panel to diagnose HPV-positive and HPV-negative head and neck cancers

BMC Cancer

Table 4 Validation test of the five tumour suppressor genes as a panel

	Mean	Bootstrap SD	2.50 %	97.50 %	Pval
(a) Diagnostic potential of the panel for HPV-negative HNSCC
Sensitivity	0.67	0.14	0.38	0.94	0.16
Specificity	0.83	0.13	0.50	1.00	0.04
PPV	0.79	0.12	0.55	1.00	0.003
NPV	0.77	0.08	0.63	0.94	0
(b) Diagnostic potential of the panel for HPV-positive HNSCC
Sensitivity	0.76	0.17	0.33	1.00	0.15
Specificity	0.67	0.14	0.35	0.90	0.16
PPV	0.53	0.12	0.33	0.78	0.74
NPV	0.87	0.08	0.70	1.00	0
(c) Diagnostic potential of the panel for HNSCC irrespective of HPV status
Sensitivity	0.59	0.14	0.33	0.88	0.46
Specificity	0.78	0.15	0.45	1.00	0.07
PPV	0.78	0.10	0.59	1.00	0
NPV	0.62	0.08	0.50	0.8	0.04

Four main quantities commonly assessed in a diagnostic test (namely; sensitivity, specificity and positive and negative predictive value) are calculated for this panel. The table was formulated into three grouping for three different comparisons: (a) HPV-negative HNSCC patients against normal healthy controls, (b) HPV-positive HNSCC patients against normal healthy controls and lastly (c) all HNSCC patients (regardless of HPV status) against normal healthy controls. The results shown are the mean, standard deviation, 95 % confidence interval and the p value (assessed from the null hypothesis value of 0.5) for 5000 bootstrap samples, using five-fold cross-validation

ISSN: 1471-2407