*2.3. Statistics*

Descriptive statistics were performed with GraphPad Prism 6.0 (GraphPad Software, Inc., San Diego, CA, USA). Qualitative data were presented as counts and percentages. Continuous variables (age) were initially assessed for normality with the D'Agostino and Pearson omnibus normality test and were then presented as means with standard deviation, as they were normally distributed. Statistical analysis of quantitative data was performed through contingency analysis with chi-square test, while, a *p* < 0.05 was considered to be statistically significant.
