About the Authors

Paraskevi V. Voulgari

Roles Writing – original draft

pvoulgar@uoi.gr, www.rheumatology.gr

Affiliation Department of Internal Medicine, Rheumatology Clinic, Medical School, University of Ioannina, Ioannina, Greece

Aliki I. Venetsanopoulou

Roles Data curation, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Department of Internal Medicine, Rheumatology Clinic, Medical School, University of Ioannina, Ioannina, Greece

Natasa Kalpourtzi

Roles Formal analysis

Affiliation Dept of Hygiene, Epidemiology, & Medical Statistics, Medical School, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece

Magda Gavana

Roles Investigation

Affiliation Dept of Primary Health Care, General Practice and Health Services Research, Medical School of Aristotle University, Thessaloniki, Greece

Apostolos Vantarakis

Roles Methodology

Affiliation Public Health, Medical School, University of Patras, Patra, Greece

Christos Hadjichristodoulou

Roles Project administration

Affiliation Dept of Hygiene and Epidemiology, Medical Faculty, University of Thessaly, Larisa, Greece

Grigoris Chlouverakis

Roles Resources

Affiliation Laboratory of Biostatistics, School of Medicine, University of Crete, Crete, Greece

Grigoris Trypsianis

Roles Software

Affiliation Laboratory of Medical Statistics, Medical School, Democritus University of Thrace, Thrace, Greece

Yannis Alamanos

Roles Validation

Affiliation Institute of Epidemiology, Preventive Medicine and Public Health, Corfu, Greece

Giota Touloumi

Roles Methodology, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Dept of Hygiene, Epidemiology, & Medical Statistics, Medical School, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece

on behalf of the EMENO study group

Membership of the EMENO is listed in the Acknowledgments.

Competing Interests

Giota Touloumi has received EU and National resources grants as well as a grant from the Hellenic Diabetes Association, all paid to her institution, to support this study and grants unrelated to this study and paid to her institution from Gilead Sciences Europe, UCL, ECDC, EU, University of Bristol, Harvard University, and National funds; The rest of the authors declared that they do not have anything to disclose regarding funding or conflict of interest with respect to this manuscript. This does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.