2.9. Statistical Analysis
The statistical analysis of the clinical data was carried out using WINSTAT programs for personal computers (Statistics for Windows 2007, Microsoft, MA, USA). All biochemical and microbiological measurements were performed in triplicate, and the data were statistically evaluated. The reported values were treated as continuous. The normality of data was confirmed using the Shapiro–Wilk test. Since the distribution of the data was significantly different from normal, nonparametric statistics were used. The results were expressed as the mean ± SD. Mann–Whitney U test was employed for comparison between independent groups of data. To evaluate the difference between connected data, the two-tailed Student’s 