As the performance of a diagnostic test can vary according to a condition's severity and clinical presentation (Goehring et al, 2004), research into the association between MMP9 and colorectal neoplasia should be undertaken in a setting that provides a more representative spectrum of disease.
We also performed a sensitivity analysis including only studies in which PCD status was defined by TEM and at least one more diagnostic test, with the rationale to examine whether the diagnostic accuracy of nNO measurement differs with the inclusion of a more representative spectrum of PCD population.
The results shown here suggest replacing conventional ramp-CP with the ramp-CPSP sequence for routine soil analysis in the solid-state since it can save considerable experimental time and provide a more representative 13C spectrum of the soil in general.
It is noteworthy that most previous publications included no or just a few chRCC, so our tumor series is more representative of the spectrum of renal cell tumors.
Larger prospective studies should be more representative of the spectrum of breast cancer as a whole and have increased power to detect independent prognostic predictors in multivariate analysis, in particular in the presence of possible confounding associations such as tumour grade and ERα status.
The main strengths of the study are the length of the follow-up period (3 years) and characteristics of the cohort (the sample consists of a high percentage of patients with mild and moderate severity, unlike other studies, thus, our sample is more representative of the spectrum of the disease in the community.
Why do some regions in Chiapas have high income levels, while other regions remain stagnant, fully dependent on federal transfers and deprived from the benefits of modern life? 1 This is the non-oil gross domestic product growth rate reported by INEGI, considered to be more representative of the productive spectrum.
In ACT-SURE, restrictions on concomitant medication were minimal, and the patient population was more representative of the broader spectrum of patients with RA in rheumatology practices.
However, we believe that we addressed this issue by including a diverse array of serovars and PFGE types in the control group, assuming that their associated exposures were presumably also diverse and thus more representative of the total spectrum of exposures associated with nonbovine Salmonella strains.
Their patients were also treated outside of a clinical trial and so may be more representative of the diverse spectrum of patients seen in general clinical practice – however Meyer et al (2001) do not comment on tumour bulk or performance status which are prognostic factors that may also explain this finding (Eisenhauer et al, 1997; Gore, 2001).
We acknowledge that future studies will benefit from the use of dual beam LTRS systems [ 39] that use one laser beam to trap the cell while a second beam can probe different regions of the cell to obtain a Raman map of the cell or to obtain a spectrum more representative of the entire cell volume.
