Response to Pokharna and Kanna: initial treatment with rosiglitazone/metformin fixed-dose combination therapy compared with monotherapy with either rosiglitazone or metformin in patients with uncontrolled type 2 diabetes.

摘要

In reference to the Letter to the Editor regarding the article by Rosenstock et al., we would like to offer the following reply to the letter received from Dr Pokharna and Dr Kanna.Although statistically significant reduction in mean hemoglobin A_(1c) (HbA_(1c)) was observed in patients with uncontrolled type 2 diabetes on fixed-dose combination therapy compared with monotherapy, it would be informative to clinicians to know the confidence intervals for the estimate of mean HbA_(1c) difference between the treatment and the control group. Although p value measures the strength of an association, it cannot be used alone to provide inference. An estimate of the size of any effect along with confidence intervals is always required for meaningful interpretation of results. Both p values and confidence intervals should be presented wherever possible .