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Reply to ‘Early-life exposure to the Chinese Famine and subsequent T2DM’

Nature Reviews Endocrinology volume 16, pages 125–126 (2020)Cite this article

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We thank Zou et al. (Early-life exposure to the Chinese Famine and subsequent T2DM. Nat. Rev. Endocrinol. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41574-019-0299-y (2019)1 for their interest in our Comment (Li, C. et al. The effect of the Chinese Famine on type 2 diabetes mellitus epidemics. Nat. Rev. Endocrinol. 15, 313–314 (2019))2 and welcome the opportunity to address their concerns about the completeness of the data we presented.

Zou et al. re-analysed the five studies included in a Review by Zimmet et al.3 together with their own study that combined pre-famine and post-famine controls from the 2011 China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study4. They claim a statistically significant overall effect on the risk of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) from an odds ratio of 1.25 (95% CI 1.15–1.37) for all studies combined using age-balanced controls and a random-effects model. Using the data as provided by Zou et al. in their supplementary table 1 (ref.1), we undertook the same analysis, including their added study, and still find a non-significant overall effect on the risk of T2DM with an odds ratio of 1.05 (95% CI 0.87–1.26). A summary of our calculations is attached (Supplementary Fig. 1).

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References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Epidemiology, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    Chihua Li & L. H. Lumey

  2. Zhengzhou Central Hospital Affiliated to Zhengzhou University, Henan, China

    Chihua Li

  3. Molecular Epidemiology, Department of Biomedical Data Sciences, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, Netherlands

    Elmar W. Tobi, Bastiaan T. Heijmans & L. H. Lumey

  4. Division of Human Nutrition, Wageningen University and Research, Wageningen, Netherlands

    Elmar W. Tobi

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  1. Chihua Li
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  2. Elmar W. Tobi
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Correspondence to L. H. Lumey.

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Li, C., Tobi, E.W., Heijmans, B.T. et al. Reply to ‘Early-life exposure to the Chinese Famine and subsequent T2DM’. Nat Rev Endocrinol 16, 125–126 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41574-019-0302-7

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