Response to Comment on: Hegde et al. Effect of 3-Month Yoga on Oxidative Stress in Type 2 Diabetes With or Without Complications: A Controlled Clinical Trial. Diabetes Care 2011;34: 2208–2210

We appreciate the thoughtful comments by Sperandei (1) on our article (2). Following are the requested clarifications. Sperandei’s first question was on how we could use paired t test and the Wilcoxon signed rank test for analyzing unpaired variables between two groups even though these tests are designed for paired variables. We would like to respond that we had used paired t test to see the changes from before and after within a group, which is mentioned in the article. We apologize because Mann-Whitney U test was adopted to compare the variables between the groups, but this was wrongly stated as Wilcoxon signed rank test in the article. This error does not have any impact on the results stated. Sperandei’s concern is that ANOVA with repeated measures was the right analysis for the current study. We could have used ANOVA as well, but because followup was not repeated several times we preferred to use the Student paired t test. Sperandei’s next question was on how there was a significant decrease of health status only in the control group under standard care. We would like to state that standard care does not worsen the status of diabetes. Diabetes is a progressive disease with gradual b-cell failure and increasing oxidative stress. This progresses despite standard care. Diabetes needs intensification of treatment once a month or once in 3 months. In our study, standard care was kept a constant, and hence we saw deterioration with regard to HbA1c levels only in the control group. Because the yoga group performed additional yoga, HbA1c levels were reduced, which reflects an improvement in health status of the diabetic patients.