Author's Response to comment on: Association of eGFR with stages of diabetic retinopathy and age-related macular degeneration in an Indian population

Dear Editor, We sincerely thank Yao et al.[1] for their insightful comments on our article, “Association of eGFR with stages of diabetic retinopathy and age-related macular degeneration in an Indian population.”[2] We appreciate the opportunity to address the concerns raised regarding our study design and statistical analysis. We agree with the observation made by Yao et al. regarding the limitations of a cross-sectional study design. A cross-sectional study limits the ability to establish causal relationships. In our study, the term “risk factors” was used to indicate associations observed during data collection, rather than to imply definitive causality. We acknowledge that these associations warrant further exploration through longitudinal studies to determine whether the identified factors truly serve as predictors of chronic kidney disease (CKD) progression. Regarding the concerns with statistical methods, we regret the typographical errors in the reporting of systolic and diastolic blood pressure (BP) values in our paper. The correct values for systolic BP in the No to mild CKD group are 128.2 ± 17.94 mmHg, and in the Moderate to severe CKD group, they are 132.42 ± 19.65 mmHg. For diastolic BP, the correct values are 80.30 ± 10.95 mmHg in the No to mild CKD group and 81.2 ± 12.14 mmHg in the Moderate to severe CKD group. Regarding the non-normal distribution of variables, we clarify that only the duration of diabetes exhibited non-normality due to a few extreme values. The rest of the data, including systolic and diastolic blood pressure, were normally distributed. Hence, for DM duration, we calculated the median and interquartile range, which are 3.0 (6.9) years for the No to mild CKD group and 3.0 (10.0) years for the Moderate to severe CKD group. Given the non-normal distribution of DM duration, we used the Mann–Whitney U test to compare differences between the groups. The test yielded a P value of <0.05, indicating a statistically significant differences between the groups. However, upon reanalysis using appropriate statistical techniques, we found that the overall conclusions and significance of our study remain largely unchanged. We thank the editor for the opportunity to address these important points. Financial support and sponsorship: Nil. Conflicts of interest: There are no conflicts of interest.