NDT Advance Access originally published online on November 1, 2005
Nephrology Dialysis Transplantation 2006 21(3):819-820; doi:10.1093/ndt/gfi241
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© The Author [2005]. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of ERA-EDTA. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org
Letters and Replies
Reply
Department of Clinical Research Pingtung Christian Hospital Pingtung, Taiwan
Email: t3275{at}ms25.hinet.net
Sir,
We would like to thank Lhotta for his critical comments on our article [1]. The major concern is the different gender ratios between alcohol users and non-alcohol users, specifically the male predominance in the former. He posits that the higher eGFR found in alcohol users was probably caused by the higher proportion of men in the alcohol user group and that males generally had a higher eGFR than females. Mr Lhotta further suggests that we report eGFR levels for men and women separately. As a matter of fact, we had observed this gender difference between the alcohol user and non-alcohol user groups, which was shown in Table 1 of our paper. We had analysed the data in the subgroup stratified by gender, the results of which indicated that eGFR were increased in alcohol users compared with non-alcohol users in both males and females (please see Table 1, below). Only estimated creatinine clearance (eCCr) increased in the male group of alcohol users. Thus, to avoid the effects of gender and pre-existing renal disease on eGFR, we further analysed the data from 419 non-diabetic, renal disease-free, alcohol users and compared them with 419 age- and sex-matched non-diabetics, renal disease-free, non-alcohol users as controls. The results were presented in Table 2 of our article, which showed that those with an alcohol habit had a significantly higher smoking rate, blood pressure, serum triglyceride, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, uric acid, estimated CCr and GFR values and lower total-cholesterol and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol concentrations than non-drinkers. As we had presented the results in sex- and age-matched groups, we did not show the results of the subgroup analysis of Table 1 in the article and were thus questioned by Mr Lhotta.
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The other comment raised is that the albumin and urea data were not reported. The albumin level in 693 non-alcohol users (43.1±2.7 g/L), 436 alcohol users (43.2± 3.2 g/L), and 127 ex-alcohol users (43.2±3.2 g/L) were not significantly different among the groups, while blood urea nitrogen level in the 436 alcohol users (5.81±1.99 m mol/L) was significantly lower (P = 0.017 by ANOVA) when compared to those of non-alcohol users (6.10±2.57 mmol/L) and ex-alcohol users (6.21±2.64 m mol/L). Both variables were used in the calculation of eGFR but not in the regression analysis. Thus, we did not present both data in the article.
Conflict of interest statement. None declared.
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- Chung FM, Yang YH, Shieh TY, Shin SJ, Tsai JCR, Lee YJ. Effect of alcohol consumption on estimated glomerular filtration rate and creatinine clearance rate. Nephrol Dial Transplant 2005; 20: 1610–1616
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