46 The risks of infant and under-5 mortalities were significantly higher for male children than for female children; postneonatal and child mortalities did not significant differ by gender in the multivariable analyses.
We also accounted for time at risk for enterococcal bacteraemia by adjusting in the multivariable analyses for the following factors occurring in the 30 days prior to bacteraemia (for VRE and VSE cases) and death or discharge (for controls): number of days of antibiotic administration, neutropenia and hypoalbuminaemia, and use of medical devices (e.g. catheters).
Finally, we attempted to optimise the models to our setting by recalculating the scoring coefficients; that is, we performed the multivariable analyses anew by using the variables included in the original models.
In order to justify the entry of the variables in the multivariate models, multi-collinearity was assessed by using the correlation matrices in the multivariable analyses output.
The model fit of the multivariable analyses was tested by visual examination of diagnostic plots [ 17].
The model fit of the multivariable analyses was tested by visual examination of diagnostic plots according to Dohoo et al. [ 27].
Therefore, the multivariable analyses were also repeated by excluding these patients, per protocol analysis, but no difference in terms of response rate, TTP and PFS, as well as in overall survival between DAiS and DAdS was found.
These findings remained in the multivariable analyses.
Furthermore, older age, one of the risk factors for AMS, was identified by univariate and multivariable analyses in the present study.
However, the number of studies are limited and often hampered by either being retrospective or cross-sectional [ 7, 8], or by lack of multivariable analyses in the prospective studies [ 4- 6].
