Thus, our ∑PCB data may not reflect the dioxin-like PCB burden present in our samples.
The burden of illness in our sample was extremely high.
This could have underestimated the burden of bacteria in our sample and the co-detection of viruses and bacteria remains an interesting issue for further studies.
The HCB and ∑PCB, ∑DDT, and ∑PAH burdens measured in our samples are comparable to those reported in sperm whales and other cetacean species worldwide (Marsili et al. 2001; see also review tables presented by Aguilar et al. 2002; Aono et al. 1997; Evans et al. 2004), although differences in analytical techniques and burdens reported in either lipid or wet weight make comparisons problematic.
Second, externalising problems may cause more burden in families and therefore parents may underreport their children's positive attributes; however, in our sample, adjusting for parental burden did not change the pattern of the results.
In our sample, a high burden of suffering, as reflected by a low SIS, was directly correlated with self-perceived severity of dizziness (DHI).
In our sample, neither variables of illness burden nor measures of subsyndromal symptoms were significantly related to ToM performance.
However, the overall assessment of the 13 Latin American countries included in our sample is that in comparative terms, their defence burden in most cases has been lower than the world average during the period in question (Fig. 2).
Our study shows that the average cluster size of 2.9 in our sample was twice that observed in another high burden setting, Tanzania, where Yang and colleagues [ 20] showed an average cluster size of 1.33.
We calculated the Cronbach coefficient of the three specific dimensions, confirming their internal consistency in our sample (0.76, 0.77 and 0.79 for Symptoms, Effects and Burden dimensions, respectively).
