Abstract
We write to correct a mistake in the letter by Kostis and Dobrzynski 1 “Response to letter on statin use and risk of cataracts: firm conclusions are still off.” 1 In the letter, Kostis and Dobrzynski state “The reason we did not use the 2010 article from the QResearch database by Hippisley-Cox and Coupland 2 is that we used a later publication from the same database (2012) by Collins and Altman 3 .”
I am the lead author of the 2010 article 3 referred to and that was from the QResearch database as he states. The 2012 publication by Collins and Altman 3 , which was included in the meta-analysis, is based on a separate database (The Health Improvement Network (THIN) database), which has no overlap with the QResearch database. This is clearly stated in the Collins article, which was an external validation results from our 2010 article. Therefore, it is incorrect to omit the results from the 2010 article based on QResearch—particularly since the analyses undertaken were designed to quantify the association between statin use and cataracts. The results from the QResearch database, which included over 2 million separate patients aged 30 to 84 and nearly ¼ million new statin users, reported an association between statin use and increased risk of cataract (table 4). It would be useful for Kostis and Dobrzynski to correct the omission from their meta-analysis 4 and provide updated results and interpretation.