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Letters to the Editor

Reply to Dr. Grathwohl

Center for Infant Nutrition, Macedonio Melloni Hospital,
University of Milan, Milan 20129 Italy

Gunther Boehm

Sophia Children's Hospital, Erasmus University,
Rotterdam, 3015 GE The Netherlands
Danone Research Centre for Specialised Nutrition,
Friedrichsdorf, 61381 Germany

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: asertac{at}tiscali.it.

Dear Editor,

We read the comments of Dr. Dominik Grathwohl on our article (1) with interest. We noted that there may be a misunderstanding regarding the interpretation of our study population and outcomes. We thank Dr. Grathwohl for giving us the opportunity to clarify these aspects.

First, we would like to emphasize that, for this article on infection prevention (1), we analyzed data from the same cohort of term infants at risk for allergy studied for cumulative incidence of atopic dermatitis (AD) (2). The only primary outcome was AD, as we explained in a previously published article (2), and the sample size calculation was based on the analysis of the previous years' AD incidence in infants born in our Maternity Hospital (2). In our opinion, infection was an extremely important aspect to be investigated in this population for its relationship with immunity, and it represented our main interest in this article (1).

We agree with Dr. Grathwohl that our sentence in the abstract "The primary outcome measures were infectious episodes, number of infections requiring antibiotics, and incidence of infections" can be misleading. Yet when the reader goes beyond the abstract, it is clearly explained and quite understandable in the "Methods" and "Discussion" sections that the authors in both papers are referring to the same population and infection is the main interest of the data analysis, although not the primary parameter. Furthermore, the follow-up study of these infants was published in the June issue of The Journal of Nutrition and explains again in detail the study structure and outcomes (3).

	LITERATURE CITED

TOP LITERATURE CITED

 

1. Arslanoglu S, Moro GE, Boehm G. Early supplementation of prebiotic oligosaccharides protects formula-fed infants against infections during the first 6 months of life. J Nutr. 2007;137:2420–4.[Abstract/Free Full Text]

2. Moro G, Arslanoglu S, Stahl B, Jelinek J, Wahn U, Boehm G. A mixture of prebiotic oligosaccharides reduces the incidence of atopic dermatitis during the first six month of age. Arch Dis Child. 2006;91:814–9.[Abstract/Free Full Text]

3. Arslanoglu S, Moro GE, Schmitt J, Tandoi L, Rizzardi S, Boehm G. Early dietary intervention with a mixture of prebiotic oligosaccharides reduces the incidence of allergic manifestations and infections during the first 2 years of life. J Nutr. 2008;6:1091–5.

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