BMJ  2006;332:1272 (27 May), doi:10.1136/bmj.332.7552.1272

Letter

Lipid lowering drugs in diabetes

Abstract was misleading

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

EDITOR—The meta-analysis by Costa et al tackles clinically relevant issues by evaluating the effect of lipid lowering treatment in primary compared with secondary prevention and diabetic patients compared with non-diabetic patients.¹ The authors' conclusions as reported in the abstract may have important implications for guide-line recommendations and marketing of statins.

The abstract reports relative risk reduction as the measure of effect for the primary outcome. They seem impressive and reach significance. But we noticed that the absolute risk differences, in particular those in primary prevention, are much less impressive, and not all risk differences reach significance. The overall baseline risk in the non-diabetic population calculated from the event rate in the placebo group is 8%. The reduction that can be achieved through lipid lowering treatment in this group is 2%, and relative risk reductions.

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Relative effect measures cannot be interpreted without knowledge of the event rate without treatment.² . . . [Full text of this article]

Department of General Practice and Primary Health Care, Ghent University, De Pintelaan 185 UZ 1K3, B-9000 Ghent, Belgium mieke.vandriel@ugent.be

Centre Universitaire de Médecien Générale, Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium

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Relevant Article

Efficacy of lipid lowering drug treatment for diabetic and non-diabetic patients: meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials

João Costa, Margarida Borges, Cláudio David, and António Vaz Carneiro
BMJ 2006 332: 1115-1124. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

This article has been cited by other articles:

• Soomro, H., Burnett, L., Davies, N. (2007). Quantifying changes in retinal anatomy after interventions for diabetic maculopathy. British Journal of Diabetes & Vascular Disease 7: 181-185 [Abstract]  

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