RESPONSE: Re: Association Between Endothelin Receptor B Nonsynonymous Variants and Melanoma Risk

Extract

Thirumaran et al. raise concerns about the true association of the S305N EDNRB mutation with melanoma risk that we previously reported in a case–control study. Even though the study by Thirumaran et al. has a larger number of patients and control subjects than ours, we want to point out several differences with our study. First, we observed that, in contrast to our work, case patients and control subjects were not matched by sex; the number of men in the control group was more than twice that of women (M/F = 2.15), although the number of male and female patients was similar (M/F = 1.2) (two-sided P <.001). Second, case patients and control subjects were not matched by age; the median age of control subjects was less than that of case patients (41 years versus 57 years). Although the odds ratios were adjusted for age and sex, these data may have lowered the power of the statistical analysis by diminishing the number of the subjects that were compared after adjustment.