By contrast, our decomposition approach provided more nuanced revelations; we found that disparities in hypertension related to tobacco use might be masked by differences in body mass index that significantly increase the disparities between black and white participants.
An actual negative co-variance (trade-off) between two life-history traits could be masked by differences among strains in overall condition, because some strains would have more resources to invest both in growth and in survival [ 28, 29].
In patient samples, such patterns may be masked by differences in parasite stage across samples, while variant expression as a result of variable gametocyte levels in a sample can be detected in vitro and across patients.
On the other hand, TB CNRs depend on variations in the burden of TB in different geographic areas and the association between distance and the CNRs could be masked by differences in the burden and transmission of TB.
Gender differences may be masked by individual differences.
This highlights some of the difficulties in studying human genetics in terms of its impact on the microbiome, and the effects of certain genetic variations might be very small (and indeed confirmed in following studies) and may be masked by environmental differences.
Although the average peak response occurred after 20 days for both tetanus and diphtheria, adverse effects on antibody concentration may be masked by individual differences in the time-dependent change in serum antibody concentrations.
The current findings suggest that NKCA varies with amount of sleep or fatigue within an individual, and that this relationship may often be masked by large interpersonal differences in cross-sectional studies.
This implies that, in experiments in which samples from different subjects are used, the variation induced by the stimulus may be masked by non-stimuli-related differences in the subjects' biological state.
Direct comparison of RA patients with control groups is difficult because any differential gene expression in RA may be masked by genetic and/or environmental differences between individuals.
Unless identical developmental stages are sampled, changes in gene expression induced by various treatments are likely to be masked by the larger effect caused by differences in developmental stage.
