Diabetes, Depression, and Death: A Randomized Controlled Trial of a Depression Treatment Program for Older Adults Based in Primary Care (PROSPECT)
Response to Thombs and Ziegelstein
- Hillary R. Bogner, MD, MSCE1,
- Knashawn H. Morales, SCD2,
- Edward P. Post, MD, PHD34 and
- Martha L. Bruce, PHD, MPH5
- 1Department of Family Medicine and Community Health, School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
- 2Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
- 3Veterans Affairs Health Services Research and Development and National Serious Mental Illness Treatment Research and Evaluation Center, Ann Arbor, Michigan
- 4Department of Internal Medicine, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan
- 5Department of Psychiatry, Weill Medical College of Cornell University, White Plains, New York
- Corresponding author: Hillary R. Bogner, MD, MSCE, Department of Family Practice and Community Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, 3400 Spruce St., 2 Gates Building, Philadelphia, PA 19104. E-mail: hillary.bogner{at}uphs.upenn.edu
We undertook the analysis on diabetes in the Prevention of Suicide in Primary Care Elderly: Collaborative Trial (PROSPECT) cohort after identifying older persons with diabetes as a subgroup for whom the risk of death has been reported to be increased by coexisting depression (1). We were guided in this exploratory analysis by published criteria for performing and reporting subgroup analyses (2).
At no time did we use automated variable selection methods as Thombs and Ziegelstein (3) suggest. We agree that overfitting is an important problem that deserves careful consideration. We had a prespecified approach to identifying and …
