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Article History

Received: 5 February 2018

Accepted: 27 November 2018

First Online: 10 December 2018

Ethics approval and consent to participate

: The present investigation was conducted in keeping with the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects, amended by the 64th WMA General Assembly, Fortaleza, Brazil, October 2013, regarding aspects such as Risks, Privacy and Confidentiality, Research protocols and Research Ethics Committees. Taking this into account, the present study represented minimum risk for the participants, involving a venous puncture performed by qualified health personnel and in a clinical laboratory, where participants were observed during and after the procedure and asked about their physical condition.Confidentiality was preserved, given that the protection of the health, dignity, integrity, privacy, and confidentiality of the personal information of the participants was taken into account. Finally, both the informed consent and a complete protocol with the methodological description of the research were presented for evaluation by “Hospital Ethics Committee” of the Erasmo Meoz University Hospital (created under Resolution 000301 of 2013) in agreement with the ethical standards for research established by Resolution 000302 of 2013 of this Institution, which issued an ethical approval with registration number 03 of June 18, 2014. It is necessary to emphasize that this committee is independent from the researchers, as well as from the sponsor of the study and transparent in its operation.To guarantee the quality of the information obtained, the study assigned an internal numerical code to each participant, as sole identification of their samples obtained and processed, using blind control. Thus, upon bioanalysis, the laboratories ignored the correspondence between the samples and each of the two population groups evaluated.

: Not applicable

: The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

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