Statistical analysis
Patients were analyzed according to their ongoing therapy to identify
possible differences in any of the demographic or clinical variables
collected. Frequency and percentages were the descriptive analyses
performed on the categorical variables. Continuous variables were
summarized as means ± standard deviation. For categorical variables,
differences between groups were evaluated using Chi-square test or
Fisher’s exact test (if more than 20% of the cells in a contingency
table have expected counts less than 5). For quantitative variables, the
Shapiro-Wilk test was performed in order to test the normality of data.
If the p-value was less than or equal to 0.05 (non-normality), the
comparison between groups was performed by means of the non-parametric
Wilcoxon rank sum test. Otherwise, the comparison was performed using
the T test. Moreover, comparison between timepoint 1 value and the other
timepoints was performed using the paired t-test (or the Wilcoxon signed
rank test in the case of non-normal data). Finally, an ANOVA test (or
Kruskal–Wallis test in the case of non-normal data) was performed to
compare the means in case of more than 2 groups. Differences were
considered statistically different if p values resulted <0.05.
Analyses were performed using software SAS 9.4 version (SAS, NC, USA).