The primary studies included in this review have substantial differences of methodological quality with regards to selection of patients, loss to follow-up, and reporting of outcomes.
Overall fall incidence of 'any fall' assessed retrospectively, but not recurrent fall rates, differed between the two studies, consistent with both the very different possibilities that true rates differed between the two populations and that they were artificial differences because of methodological differences between studies.
Differences could have arisen because of methodological differences.
This difference is most probably a consequence of methodological differences: these later studies (Moeller et al., 2008; Tsao et al., 2008) relied on MION-based measurements of activity-related changes in blood volume, well-known to be more sensitive by a factor of 3 than the BOLD method deployed by us, using the same 3T scanner (Leite et al., 2002).
The overall methodological quality was poor and no statistically significant differences between reporting of methodological quality were detected between studies with positive versus negative findings.
Though there are some differences on account of methodological and other factors, our data is broadly in alignment with previously reported incidence rates for Fusobacterium bacteremia.
However, while some excellent manual medicine diagnostic studies exist, review articles indicate that findings often vary between studies because of methodological differences, different clinician experiences, lack of examiner training and consensus before the study, lack of concomitant comparisons between symptomatic and asymptomatic subjects, and lack of objective markers [ 7, 16– 16].
Changes in plasma renin described previously [ 30] differed from our findings, possibly because of methodological differences, as we did not measure plasma renin activity but plasma renin concentration.
This difference in contra-indicated prescription trends may be a consequence of methodological differences between our study and the UK study.
To shed light on the impact of methodological differences on the reporting of sex differences in rough-and-tumble play behavior, we assessed how the sex and familiarity of the play partner can influence specific aspects of play behavior.
The difference in the reporting of methodological quality of African trials compared with North American trials may not arise from a single factor, but from a combination of inter-related factors.
