Author's reply: To PMID 24550591.

Madam,

We would like to thank reader for his/her valuabale comments. Meanwhile, I would like to clarify and reply to the reader point-by-point as given below:

This study is a cohort observational population-based study conducted at Hamad Medical Hospital and PHC Centre.[1] A total of 1,542 consecutive diabetes patients who were diagnosed with dyslipidemia and prescribed any of the indicated statins between January 2007 and September 2013 were included in the study. Since the study is based on cohort time interval and subjects who met and satisfied inclusion and exclusion criteria, there is no need for the sample size

We do agree with the reader that there are typographical errors in the Results section. The third paragraph should read as: “Atorvastatin reduced LDL-C the most at a dose of 40 mg (15.9%) and atorvastatin reduced LDL-C the most at a dose of 20 mg (21.2%),” which is very clear and correct, as mentioned in Table 1 of the published article

Table 1

Comparison of the efficacy of various statins in different doses (10, 20, and 40 mg)

As can be observed from the title of Figure 1b stated as, “Number of patients with no microalbuminuria at baseline but developed it after 2 years”. Meanwhile, in the Results section the content and term has been used correctly; therefore, it is very obvious that the footnote of the graph incorrectly mentions microalbuminia instead of microalbuminuria. In fact, this typographical errors ocurred while using Excel Computer Software for graphical purposes

Figure 1

(a) Rosuvastatin versus other statins, (b) Comparison of patients with pre- and posttreatment microalbuminuria at the end of 2 years

It is true that we have solely mentioned the acquisition cost of rosuvastatin when compared to atorvastatin, which was available. We agree with the reader that a cost-effective analysis with the calculation of the incremental cost effectiveness ratio would have been much more appropriate and insightful; however, it was not main objective of this study.