American Journal of Epidemiology Vol. 154, No. 7 : 685-686
Copyright © 2001 by The Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR |
RE: "CHANGES IN BODY MASS INDEX PRIOR TO BASELINE AMONG PARTICIPANTS WHO ARE ILL OR WHO DIE DURING THE EARLY YEARS OF FOLLOW-UP"
Department of Health and Nutrition Sciences Brooklyn College of the City University of New York Brooklyn, NY 11210
The article by Stevens et al. (1
) sheds fresh light on the confounding of the relation between mortality risk and body mass index by preexisting illness. For example, their analysis suggests that eliminating up to, but no more than, the first 4 years of deaths is effective in removing such confounding. This is a useful guide for future investigators.
Their analysis did not, however, adequately address an important question raised by the meta-analysis of Allison et al. (2): Does eliminating subjects with serious illness and pre-baseline weight loss remove all confounders? Allison et al. (2) showed that, even after eliminating deaths during early
REFERENCES
Departments of Nutrition, Epidemiology, and Biostatistics School of Public Health University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, NC 27599