[lippel82]

From the artcile: "The numbers were small — 13 metformin-exposed boys were born with genital defects. But after the researchers adjusted for factors including parental ages and maternal smoking status, they found a 3.39-fold rise in the odds of a genital defect. “The rate per se was surprisingly high,” Wensink says."

[ovi256]

> after the researchers adjusted for factors including parental ages and maternal smoking status

The exact adjustments made can change the solidity of the finding into anything from "rock solid" to "complete trash". Seemingly solid studies are routinely trashed by third party method reviewers that the initial peer reviewers missed. So we'll know better when they get around to it.

[carlmr]

>But after the researchers adjusted for factors including parental ages and maternal smoking status, they found a 3.39-fold rise in the odds of a genital defect

If they didn't adjust for obesity, then it's really pointless to attribute this to the drug. Age and smoking status is not enough.

[rat9988]

Why would you assume they didn't? They most likely did.

[carlmr]

From the quote it says they only adjusted for age and smoking.

[tssva]

The quote says the factors included age and smoking not that they only included age and smoking.

[carlmr]

I did indeed not read that properly. I'd have to check the actual publication. It's at least suspicious that they don't mention it, since obesity is probably the first thing you should think of when saying diabetes.

[darawk]

Adjusting for confounders on an n of 13 is statistically ridiculous.

[carlmr]

It's not n=13 it's 13 with genetic defects.

Also not adjusting for confounders is statistically ridiculous. As well as n=13 studies.

[orwin]

i'll call n the total number of patients. if n * 9 / 1000 = 13, you'll find out that n is around 1400, which is a pretty high number in discovery studies. Maybe not for diabetes though, i remember hosting anonymized data from a lot more patients two years ago, i felt this was THE subject all the medical founding was put into (that and air quality and its effect studies).