Statistical analysis
The assumption of normality of distribution was evaluated by the Shapiro-Wilk test and a graphic method (quantile-quantile plots). Comparison of categorical variables was performed by a chi-squared test. Differences between patient and control groups were evaluated by Mann-Whitney Finally, a comparison of distributions of inflammatory activity changes assessed by the two examination methods (ΔOST vs. ΔPDUS and ΔOST vs. ΔGSUS) was performed by Bayesian posterior analysis using the Markov Chain Monte Carlo approach for the choice of priors; the default Markov Chain Monte Carlo sample size of 100,000 was used for all analyses. Group differences were calculated as differences in the means and are shown as differences between the groups, which describes the ability to separate the compared groups. Differences with an accuracy ≥80% were interpreted as significant (*