As indicated within the methods section, overall pulmonary function testing was not blinded and thus a bias may be possible.
71, 72 Overall, pulmonary function testing is the most practical method of assessing the severity of lung disease in LAM. 1, 45 In patients with near normal flow rates and a reduced diffusion capacity, the severity of lung disease is best graded by a 6-minute walk test or cardiopulmonary exercise testing.
It is noteworthy that our data strongly suggest that deletion of a portion of factor Va to test its overall function within the cofactor molecule by functional assays alone, without analyzing the pathway to thrombin formation, does not represent optimal experimental conditions, required to obtain a definite answer.
At a minimum, the assays should include (a) a plate test for overall function of the protein that is amenable to mass screening (such as our assays for nonsense suppression), and (b) a specific assay for the function of the domain in which the mutations reside (such as the immunofluorescent localization assay we used for nuclear export and the two hybrid assay for protein-protein interactions).
As previously reported[6], a cluster analysis was created by using the squared sum of z scores, in order to obtain an overall value of attention and executive function test.
Because patients who attempted and failed the physical function tests represent the extremes of functional impairment, our analysis overestimates the overall function of our cohort.
Cognitive measures were evaluated by first testing for differences in overall functions (executive, memory and attention/concentration functions), and then continuing with appropriate individual test scores if differences were detected at the overall function level.
For residents with normal cognition (abbreviated mental test score ≥7) the activity group deteriorated less in overall function (late life function and disability instrument, total function component score) in the first six months of follow-up (table 3).
This test was repeated three times, and the mean value of the scores was taken as the overall function scores.
See also kidney function test.
