Statistical analysis
The Shapiro Wilk test was used to verify the data distribution. Variables without normal distribution were analyzed
by nonparametric tests. Baseline characteristics of thegroups were compared with Student’s t test or the similar, ManneWhitney test, while the statistical differences between the pre and post intervention, with the Wilcoxon test. The correlation between baseline values and the difference observed at the end of the biochemical indicators
of the program was obtained by Spearman’s correlation coefficient after plotting the values in scatter plots with linear regression setting.
The monthly measurements of systolic and diastolic
blood pressure, heart rate and respiratory rates were compared over the month by the repeated measures analysis (Friedman). The level of significance for all tests was
p < 0.05. Statistical procedures were performed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) 13.0 and
Prism 3.0.