Background: Quantitative assessment of body fat is important for the diagnosis and treatment of diseases related to obesity, Computed tomography (CT) becoming the standard procedure for measuring the abdominal fat distribution. Material and method: The retrospective study included 111 inpatients, who underwent routine abdominal CT exams in the Radiology Laboratory of SCJU Tg.Mures (2013). MPR MDCT (SOMATOM AS 64) data was processed using a custom written MATLAB R2009b software, ImageJ being used for tracing of the visceral fat area (VFA). Patient data (including blood glucose, cholesterol and triglycerides) were analyzed using MO Excel and GraphPad Inprism5. Results: Visceral Fat percentage varied in population from 14.59-68.69 (SD = 11.83) with significant difference between sexes (male vs. female, 46.98 vs. 31.62, p <0.05). Cholesterol values >220 mg% and triglycerides >150 mg% are significantly associated with the VF percent (p <0.05). Overall there is a weak correlation between the lab variables and the measured fat, the strongest one being between triglycerides and the VFA (r = +0.23) and between age and VFA percentage (certain samples). Conclusions: The technique used should decreases the human error in marking of the fat areas providing a better estimation of the VF/VF percentage. CT measured VF relates with certain lab tests. Further analysis, is required for a better use of CT in obesity related pathology diagnosis and treatment
The paper provides an empirical analysis of the macroeconomic factors that enhance revenue gap in South Africa using the multivariate cointegration techniques for the period 1965 to 2012. The results from the cointegration analysis indicate that the revenue gap in South Africa is negatively associated with the level of imports while positively related to external debt and underground economy. The former finding is consistent with the notion that imports are subjected to more taxation than domestic activities because of certain features of international trade that tend to make tax evasion difficult. On the other hand, the positive relationship between external debt and tax gap shows that the South African government relies upon external debt to finance its budget deficit resulting from missing revenues. Furthermore, the observed negative effect of the post-apartheid dummy confirms that the tax policy reforms that South Africa introduced following the liberation in 1994 have led to a reduction in missing revenues. The results from the Granger causality test also show that there is a unidirectional causality running from imports and underground economy to revenue gap, while revenue gap on the other hand is found to Granger-cause national income and external debt in South Africa.
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