• DOI:10.1007/s11657-013-0122-7
• Corpus ID: 5929230

A global representation of vitamin D status in healthy populations: reply to comment by Saadi

@article{Wahl2013AGR,
  title={A global representation of vitamin D status in healthy populations: reply to comment by Saadi},
  author={Denys A. Wahl and Cyrus Cooper and Peter R. Ebeling and Manfred Eggersdorfer and Jennifer Hilger and Kristina Hoffmann and R. G. Josse and John A. Kanis and Ambrish Mithal and Dominique D. Pierroz and Judy Stenmark and Elisabeth St{\"o}cklin and Bess Dawson-Hughes},
  journal={Archives of Osteoporosis},
  year={2013},
  volume={8},
  pages={1-2}
}

• D. A. Wahl, C. Cooper, +10 authors B. Dawson-Hughes
• Published 1 February 2013
• Medicine
• Archives of Osteoporosis

Dear Editor,We appreciatethe thoughtfulletter fromDr. SaadiconcerningthestudyfromSaudiArabiathatweincludedinourarticleon“A global representation of vitamin D status in healthy pop-ulations”[1].Ashepointsout,weincludedanarticledescrib-ingthevitaminDstatusofwomeninSaudiArabiathatdidnotmeet our inclusion criteria because it was derived from aclinical setting and because it excluded women with 25OHDlevels under 50 nmol/L [2]. This article should have beenexcluded. We regret the error and will correct it on the nextrevision of the map.Dr. Saadi suggests that several other articles should havebeen considered [3–7]. Of these, the two reports by Ardawiet al. [6, 7] were published after the cutoff date of oursearch, February 28, 2011. Had they been published earlier,they would not have met the inclusion criteria because theyinvolved study populations derived from a clinical setting.Similarly, the papers of Ghannam et al. [4] and Saadi et al.[3] were excluded because the study populations includedsubjects selected in a clinical setting (local hospitals andclinics). The paper by El-Sonbaty [5] was identified in ourliteraturesearchbutwasexcludedbecausethepopulationwasnot randomly selected (it involved veiled Kuwaiti womenwho had three children or less).We suspect that 25OHD levels in the Saudi Arabianpeninsula are low and hope that the characterization of25OHD levels in nonclinical derived populations will beforth coming.