Our meta analysis of a homogeneous set of studies is the first to provide valuable LLNs for fiber CSA according to fiber type and gender .
Skeletal muscle atrophy is a major systemic impairment in chronic diseases .
Yet its determinants have been hard to identify because a clear research definition has not been agreed upon .
The reduction in muscle fiber cross-sectional area ( CSA ) is a widely acknowledged marker of muscle atrophy , but no reference values for the muscle fiber CSA at the age of the onset of chronic disease have ever been published .
Discrepancy between published report and actual conduct of randomized clinical trials.
R and omized clinical trial ( RCT ) publications with inappropriate r and om-sequence generation , lack of allocation concealment , or imperfect blinding yield inflated estimates of effect compared to those in which adequate methods are described . RCTs that do not state methods used yield similar effect estimates , suggesting that inadequate methods were used . We compared RCT publications with investigator reports of actual practice for 40 rheumatology RCTs published in 1997/1998 . In RCTs in which these methods were not described in the trial reports and would thus have been characterized as " inadequate , " investigators reported using methods of r and om-sequence generation and allocation concealment that would be considered adequate in 77.4 and 78.1 % of RCTs , respectively . This suggests that , in contrast to previous reports , inadequate r and om-sequence generation and allocation concealment , per se , may not be a major problem in RCTs . Characterizing RCTs as " good " or " poor " quality based on the published report is likely to be inappropriate
Our meta analysis of a homogeneous set of studies is the first to provide valuable LLNs for fiber CSA according to fiber type and gender .
Skeletal muscle atrophy is a major systemic impairment in chronic diseases .
Yet its determinants have been hard to identify because a clear research definition has not been agreed upon .
The reduction in muscle fiber cross-sectional area ( CSA ) is a widely acknowledged marker of muscle atrophy , but no reference values for the muscle fiber CSA at the age of the onset of chronic disease have ever been published .