Fig. 2

Traditional approach vs. framework approach for statistical analysis of multiple immune markers. The left side illustrates the conventional statistical regression approach selecting potentially relevant markers primarily on the basis of statistical significance in a multivariate regression model. The right side illustrates the proposed approach incorporating a priori existing immunological knowledge (1) in combination with appropriate statistical methods (2-6). The aim is to iteratively aggregate information from single measurements (2) to summary indices reflecting the underlying immunological construct (3-4) either to further aggregate these summary indices to joint distribution constructs such as Th1/Th1 balance (5) and/or to explore the inter-relationship of these summary indices/joint distribution indicators in multiple regression analysis (6). See text for further details