FSTL1 and metastatic malignant neoplasm in the lymph nodes: We examined the association of clinic-pathological parameters of patients and FSTL1 promoter hypermethylation (Table 1) and found no difference between FSTL1-hypermethylated and -nonmethylated cases in patient age, gender, cancer stage, histological subtype and lymph node metastasis, indicating that the promoter hypermethylation of FSTL1 might be an early event during NPC tumorigenesis.