Authors' reply.

Sir,

We thank Dr. Mahajan for his comments[1] on our paper.[2] Our reply to the queries are as follows:

The study was planned to focus the beneficial effects of irbesartan in comparison to insulin and thus the relevance of the study remains clear.

Suggestion at 2 is well-taken for future studies.

We regret the typing error; please read group III for insulin and group IV for irbesartan.

It is a printing error. The original Table (1 and 2) submitted to the journal office are reproduced here.

Table 1

Effect of irbesartan (20 mg/kg/po) pretreatment on urinary protein excretion in STZ-induced diabetic rats (values are mean ± SEM; n = 10 in each group)

Group	Urine protein (g/L)
	0 week	4 weeks	8 weeks	12 weeks	16 weeks
I Control	Nil	Nil	Nil	Nil	Nil
IISTZ	Nil	1.0 ± 0.07	1.6 ± 0.16	1.9 ± 0.16	2.1 ± 0.13
IIIInsulin + STZ	Nil	Nil	Nil	Nil	Nil
IVIrbesartan + STZ	Nil	0.5 ± 0.04‡	0.8 ± 0.06‡	0.9 ± 0.08‡	0.8 ± 0.09‡

P <0.01 when compared with group II (Student’s t-test for unpaired data).

Table 2

Effect of irbesartan (20 mg/kg, po) pretreatment on creatinine clearance in STZ-induced diabetic rats (values are mean ± SEM; n = 10 in each group)

Group	Creatinine clearance (ml/min)
	0 week	4 weeks	8 weeks	12 weeks	16 weeks
I Control	1.1 ± 0.18	1.1 ± 0.09	1.1 ± 0.04	1.1 ± 0.05	1.2 ± 0.06
IISTZ	0.9 ± 0.07	1.8 ± 0.16	0.9 ± 0.12	0.2 ± 0.11	0.1 ± 0.03
IIIInsulin + STZ	0.9 ± 0.08	0.9 ± 0.07‡	0.8 ± 0.06	0.8 ± 0.08‡	0.7 ± 0.03‡
IVIrbesartan + STZ	1.0 ± 0.03	0.7 ± 0.03‡	0.6 ± 0.18	0.5 ± 0.15	0.4 ± 0.02‡†

Statistically analyzed by Student’s t-test (unpaired)

P <0.01 when compared with group II (Student’s t-test for unpaired data).