Reply-Letter to the Editor–Superiority of new predictive equation for resting energy expenditure

We are enormously grateful for your interest in our work, your remarks came to bring out valuable points of discussion. We would like to start off mentioning that in the work of Orozco-Ruiz et al. we addressed the role that ethnicity has on the resting energy expenditure, having an impact on the performance of predictive equations. However, it is also mentioned that one of the principal limitations of this study is the lack of external validation for the NEQ. We carried out Split-Sample Validation in a subgroup of sub- jects that shared similar characteristics with the develop subset. It is known that the aws of this approach of validation increase when it is applied in studies that have dichotomous outcomes, as a discriminator analysis (ability to distinguish between patients with and without the outcome), and also with the use of small sample sizes. Nevertheless, in this study, we assured the con- duction of the analysis in a proper sample size for dealing the over- tting of the model. Secondly, the selection of the resting energy equations to be compared with our NEQ was made considering the most used equations for the nutritionist in the clinical practice of Mexico and also this selection was based on the work of Marra et al. who presented a review of the principal equations developed for people with overweight and obesity. It is important to point out that we completely agree on the existence of an extensive number of predictive equations across the different populations and we appreciated your contribution providing us feedback about the novel equations generated in this eld. That is why, we included to our analysis these equations that you have cited: Tseng, Weijs, and Kruizenga. We observe that despite including these equations to our analysis, the performance of the NEQ to pre- dicting resting energy expenditure in a Mexican population with overweight and obesity remain to be the most suitable equation for this population. In conclusion, results of internal validation have shown the su- periority of our NEQ against other equations to predict resting en- ergy expenditure in a Mexican population. Even though it has not been within the scope of our research to generate external validity, this study could give way to future research, evaluating the good performance of the NEQ in a broad-based sampling of Mexican adults with overweight and obesity taking into account the different phenotypes and areas of origin.