Some eEGCs had a final diagnosis of advanced gastric cancer after surgical resection, but postoperative diagnosis was not a criterion of case selection.
Another states, "Importantly, the inclusion criteria of cases and controls were not well defined in all included studies, which might also have influenced our results".
For example, one paper reads, "Importantly, the inclusion criteria of cases and controls were not well defined in all included studies and thus might have influenced our results".
Finally, in all meta-analyses of gene-disease association studies, the inclusion criteria of cases and controls can be a potentially confounding factor.
The age criteria of cases and controls were to be over 40 and less than 85 years.
Thus, in all, 736 individuals satisfied the sample and phenotype criteria of cases (n = 149) or controls (n = 587).
Further, HSP27 expression may rise in many stress related conditions; even so, its novel relevance to bone physiology can be deduced from our study owing to the strict selection criteria of cases and controls.
Of the 23 people, a total of 14 met the criteria of case definition (attack rate: 60.9%).
To verify whether matching criteria of case and control herds concerning the herd size were met, the two groups were compared by cross tabulations.
However, in order to minimize this possibility with regard to cases, we performed our study during the peak influenza period, and the criteria of case definition were rigorously applied by GPs.
