The differences between the two studies may be explained by differences in the cut-off point for the definition of poor quality of life.
The bivariate model analysis revealed that the heterogeneity was only partly (15%) explained by the threshold effect where variations in sensitivity and specificity were related to differences in the cut-off points of sTREM-1 in the included studies.
This is the first study to show that metabolic syndrome, according to all three definitions (WHO, NCEP-ATP III, and IDF), in a large sample of Spanish patients with type 2 diabetes, is independently associated with different risk factors (metabolic and non-metabolic) depending on the diagnostic criteria used, likely due in part to the differences in the cut-off points.
As individual studies used different cut-off points for defining elevated BNPs, Spearman's correlation coefficient between sensitivity and specificity was calculated to detect the presence of a threshold effect, where variations in sensitivity and specificity were related to differences in the cut-off point used to define an elevated BNPs level [ 19].
These generic cut-offs are currently used in the absence of ethno-specific values. 1 Results of the few studies on optimal WC cut-offs in sub-Saharan Africans varied according to the outcome variables and the study population, but in spite of small differences in the cut-off points, all reported higher thresholds for women, in contrast to values in other race-ethnicity groups.
A probable explanation for the difference in the cut-off scores is that the BDI scores are, in general, somewhat higher than the BDI-II scores according to the adjustment table in the BDI-II manual.
We speculate that the difference between the cut-off detected in our study and that reported in the previous study is related to differences between the two study populations.
Differences in the proportion over the cut-off limit were evaluated by Fisher's exact test.
In these cases, we also noticed that the interobserver variability was due to observer-dependent differences in the estimation of the cut-off value, i.e. <10% versus ≥10% of the tumor area (case no. 10; Table 3).
These cut-off values differ from the cut-off values reported in Caucasians.
To identify those sequences differing from consensus in less than 5 differences, for instance, the cut-off score was set as +18.
