These indices would represent validated summaries of multiple variables, which relate to a validated surrogate outcome marker such as a severity index.
The discrepancies between animal experiments and clinical trials might be due to some limitations of clinical studies, such as a severity of the disease, other medications, given dose, duration of trial etc. Especially, the given dose of taurine per body weight is more than 10 times higher in animal experiments (e.g. diet containing 5% taurine) than in clinical trials (1.5 3 g taurine per day).
Clinical practice tends to perceive test results as either normal or abnormal, or as normal, uncertain or abnormal, or alternatively to use such results as a severity scale of the patient's prognosis for a given outcome.
That we were unable to detect such a difference in severity of CDAD in the 027 versus other ribotypes raises the question of whether this strain can explain recent changes in the epidemiology of C. difficile infection.
This commentary elaborates on how such a measure of severity should be validated to determine whether it is appropriate for practical use.
Additionally, the higher number of PICU admissions may be due to a truly higher severity of the pandemic influenza A (H1N1) 2009 subtype in children compared to previous seasonal influenza subtypes [e.g., [ 18, 25]], although not all studies report such a difference in severity [ 26, 27], or found a difference only regarding risk groups [ 28].
Some studies collected data about co morbidities and used a severity index such as the Charlson co morbidity index [ 18, 24, 25].
We also considered using a severity score, such as the Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation score or the Simplified Acute Physiology Score II score, as a prognostic variable.
No [Israeli politician] is more identified, or has such a burning desire and severity of belief in the possibility of a peace agreement with the Palestinians, than Tzipi Livni.
Such a mechanism governs the severity of the conduction slowing that in turn commands the extent of myocardial rearrangements and fibrosis, confirming our hypothesis of a direct link between ventricular conduction defects and fibrosis [10].
