Table 5. Associations of bile acids and C4 levels with MetS and T2DM.

	MetS and T2DM free controls	MetS patients	T2DM patients	p-valuea	p-valueb	p-valueb	p-valueb
	median (range) [µmol/L]	median (range) [µmol/L]	median (range) [µmol/L]	controls vs MetS vs T2DM	controls vs MetS	controls vs T2DM	MetS vs T2DM
C4	0.029 (0.004–0.146)	0.054 (0.006–0.258)	0.052 (0.003–0.266)	0.009	0.043	0.002*	0.420
Primary bile acids	1.75 (0.154–13.0)	1.29 (0.299–9.56)	1.67 (0.207–9.27)	0.485	0.243	0.711	0.416
Secondary bile acids	1.10 (0.073–8.93)	0.996 (0.241–8.01)	1.33 (0.115–5.30)	0.290	0.834	0.210	0.150
Unconjugated bile acids	0.999 (0.112–8.20)	1.13 (0.287–5.52)	1.28 (0.195–8.26)	0.329	0.429	0.138	0.478
Conjugated bile acids	1.46 (0.115–21.1)	0.928 (0.342–16.4)	1.18 (0.172–6.50)	0.496	0.210	0.716	0.517
Total bile acids	2.85 (0.227–22.0)	2.40 (0.884–17.6)	3.33 (0.831–9.73)	0.409	0.467	0.524	0.188

In order to account for multiple comparisons, a Bonferroni-corrected α error of 0.0083 (6 tests) was set as significance threshold for the Kruskal-Wallis test whereas a corrected α error of 0.0028 (18 tests) was set as significance threshold for the Mann-Whitney test.

^aKruskal-Wallis test.

^bMann-Whitney U test.

*indicates a statistically significant difference after Bonferroni correction for multiple testing.