39 The risk estimates in the current study were not affected by excluding the first year of follow-up, which suggests that reverse causality (changes in levels of inflammatory markers due to an undetected cancer) was unlikely.
We analyzed reports of suspected cases from 3 regions in Niger during 2002 2012 (154,392 health area weeks), simulating elimination of serogroup A meningitis by excluding health area years with identification of such cases.
Asked then if the Department of Education would cancel Navient's lucrative contract, Duncan said, "Every option is on the table". During the ensuing months, the Education Department considered punishing Navient, according to people familiar with the matter, by excluding it for a year from the group of companies allowed to service American college students' federal loans.
In addition, we also conducted a lag analysis by excluding the first 1 year of follow-up to test for the possibility of reverse causality.
In addition, body fat distribution, especially visceral adipose tissue accumulation, has been found to have a key role in the development of cardiovascular and metabolic disease.17 To minimize the potential effect of reverse causation,18 we also performed a sensitivity analyses by excluding the first five years of follow-up.
To account for this, we shorten our estimation window by excluding the growth in years 2008 and 2009.
Increased specificity is obtained by excluding participants below 46 years of age.
This was examined by excluding the first five years of follow-up, and the results were little affected.
Robustness of data was investigated by excluding the first two years of follow-up and by reanalysing data separately for the first and second half of follow-up.
We did a sensitivity analysis by excluding the first 2 years of follow-up and found that the results were similar to the primary analysis.
