From a clinical point of view these results show that a MTC model based on continuous outcome measures provides greater precision of estimates of efficacy.
There was a suggestion of a modest decrease in birth weight with higher exposure based on continuous exposure measures {somewhat stronger for male births [see Supplemental Material, Table 1 (http://dx.doi.org/10.1289/ehp.1104752)]}, but no monotonic gradient across quintiles.
A joint statement from the American Diabetes Association and the European Association for the Study of Diabetes recommends expanding the evidence regarding the use of scales based on continuous variables to measure metabolic risk [ 26].
3 Different test methodologies and results, based on continuous, categorical, or composite measures, as well as the use of different rating systems, limit comparability.
32 Categorisation of patients in ESR low, moderate and high disease activity groups was done by using tertiles of the measure (for results based on continuous variables and tertiles using other disease activity measures, see online supplementary figures S1 and S2, respectively).
The algorithm based on continuous variables and likelihood ratio as distance measure assumes a multivariate normal distribution of the data, but there is some evidence that the procedure remains valid under violation of the distribution assumption [16].
MAGE is a popular measure especially in studies based on continuous glucose monitoring systems.
