4.5. Statistics

GraphPad Prism software (GraphPad Software, San Diego, CA, USA)was used to perform statistical analysis. Results are expressed as the mean ± standard deviation (lower and upper extremities) and percentages, as appropriate. Student’s t-test was applied to compare means. When our data did not follow a Gaussian distribution, nonparametric tests such as the Mann–Whitney U test and Spearman correlation were used for data analysis. All p values were two-sided, and p < 0.05 was considered significant. Spearman test significance was confirmed by p-value analysis using the Benjamini–Hochberg procedure with a criterion of <5% False Discovery Rate [65].