BMJ 2001;323:752 ( 29 September )

Letters

Author's reply to criticism of study on benzodiazepines and risk of hip fracture

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR---Sgadari et al's letter1 commented on the study that I and several others carried out to see whether benzodiazepines are associated with an increased risk of hip fracture.2 We found that they are not.

In their large case-control study of 9752 patients with hip fractures compared with 38 564 controls, Sgadari et al also found no association between the use of benzodiazepines and hip fracture.3 But like us, though in different subgroups, they did find an association between certain drugs and hip fracture. They looked at the metabolic pathways involved, and it seems that in a specific subgroup of the most elderly patients these drugs may confer more risk. If this is not the result of multiple post-hoc testing it is an interesting finding, and one we did not look at.

We stated that the results we found for individual drugs might be spurious, related to multiple testing and statistical . . . [Full text of this article]
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Study should have reported more data about associated diseases
Antonio Sgadari, Giovanni Gambassi, Claudio Pedone, and Graziano Onder
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Rapid Responses:

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Benzodiazepines often cause more harm than good - now beyond reasonable doubt.
Andrew Byrne
bmj.com, 5 Oct 2001 [Full text]
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