NPTX2 and colorectal carcinoma: Model 12 which included seven hypermethylated gene promoter regions (ALX4, BMP3, NPTX2, RARB, SDC2, SEPT9, and VIM) and the covariates: sex(female) and age>66 had the ability to distinguish CRC patients from patients without CRC with an optimism-corrected AUC of 0.860 (optimism = 0.027) (Fig 3A).