Table 4.

Pearson’s correlation coefficient of the correlations between baseline Brucella antibody titers with different baseline variables (n = 94)

Variable	R with Brucella melitensis antibody titer (P value)	R with Brucella abortus antibody titer (P value)
Age	−0.05 (0.65)	− 0.04 (0.71)
Location	0.04 (0.73)	0.2 (0.05)
Culture positivity	0.14 (0.17)	0.29 (0.004)a
Arthralgia	0.02 (0.86)	0.09 (0.4)
Complicated brucellosis	−0.09 (0.37)	−0.25 (0.02)b
Baseline temperature	0.07 (0.84)	−0.002 (0.99)
Baseline white blood cells count	0.03 (0.77)	−0.01 (0.92)
Baseline C-reactive protein	0.03 (0.79)	0.04 (0.74)
Baseline erythrocyte sedimentation rate	−0.001 (0.99)	−0.01 (0.97)

^a This result indicates that the higher the antibody titers, the higher the probability that a culture is positive in the 56.4% of the total patient population who had positive Brucella culture at baseline

^b This result indicates that the complicated brucellosis was associated with lower antibody titers at baseline. This result should be carefully interpreted given the low correlation coefficient