Diabetes, Depression, and Death: A Randomized Controlled Trial of a Depression Treatment Program for Older Adults Based in Primary Care (PROSPECT)

Abstract

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 …