Comment on: DiChiara et al. (2007) The Effect of Aspirin Dosing on Platelet Function in Diabetic and Nondiabetic Patients: An Analysis From the Aspirin-Induced Platelet Effect (ASPECT) Study: Diabetes 56:3014–3019, 2007

I read with interest the recently published study (1) comparing antiplatelet potency of three aspirin doses in the diabetic and nondiabetic cohorts of the Aspirin-Induced Platelet Effect (ASPECT) trial. The study represents a post hoc analysis of the original ASPECT study published elsewhere (2). The attempts of the authors to exploit the original database by further analyses are valuable, especially when an important clinical message cannot fit within the framework of the main article. However, the reporting of baseline data in these two ASPECT publications raises concerns and deserves further scrutiny. Indeed, most of the numbers presented in Table 1 for both publications do not match. The differences are outlined in Table 1 of this letter.

Surprisingly, the only matched variables for both studies were age, weight, and the number of diabetic subjects. After attempts to perform comprehensive statistical analyses, taking into account the complicated crossover design of ASPECT provided in the original article (1), it is not possible to gain an understanding of the true database. In fact, such discrepancies may challenge not only the quality of the second analysis published in Diabetes but also the primary ASPECT report.