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Correspondence
Gender differences in COPD: are women more susceptible to smoking effects than men?
  1. Martin R Miller1,
  2. Rachel E Jordan2,
  3. Peymané Adab2
  1. 1Department of Medicine, University Hospitals Birmingham, Birmingham, UK
  2. 2Unit of Public Health, Epidemiology and Biostatistics, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK
  1. Correspondence to Dr Martin R Miller, Department of Medicine, 5th Floor Nuffield House, Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham B15 2TH, UK; martin.miller{at}uhb.nhs.uk

https://doi.org/10.1136/thx.2010.152348

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    We read the paper by Sørheim et al1 with interest since possible clinical bias with regard to sex and disease in terms of diagnosis and treatment is clearly an important issue. The main problem with comparing the effect of a disease such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) between the two sexes is how one expresses the lung function deficit so that the data for the two sexes can be correctly analysed together.

    We believe the method used by Sørheim et al introduces a sex bias that may be incorrectly influencing their result. The authors used percentage predicted to express the degree of …

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    Footnotes

    • Linked article 153478.

    • Competing interests None.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; not externally peer reviewed.

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      Author's response
      Inga-Cecilie Sørheim Ane Johannessen Amund Gulsvik Per S Bakke Edwin K Silverman Dawn L DeMeo
      Thorax 2010; 66 922-922 Published Online First: 20 Nov 2010. doi: 10.1136/thx.2010.153478