Response to: Update on “Associations of Estrogen Receptor Alpha Gene Polymorphisms with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus and Metabolic Syndrome: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis”

Dear Editor,

Associations of Estrogen Receptor Alpha Gene Polymorphisms with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus and Metabolic Syndrome: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

In the Letter to Editor [1] on the update of our article [2], Ulhaq first pointed out the mistake in the wording of certain passage in our article [2]. After examining, we found that we did make mistakes. The correct way of expression is “recessive model” rather than the “regressive model”. We are very grateful to him for pointing this out.

Second, Ulhaq updated the results on the basis of our meta-analysis, which was published in 2018. He supplemented it with two more articles, and we think it is completely feasible. The reasons why we did not include these two articles are that, first, one of them was published in the journal of Bangladesh Journal of Medical Science [3] that cannot be retrieved in our available databases including PubMed, Embase, and Web of Science; second, the other article he added was published in 2019 [4], however, our meta-analysis was published in 2018. Hence, we were not able to include these two articles in our study.

By the way, we want to remind that “P_raw” and “P_FDR” in our article do not refer to “P random-effect model” and “P fixed-effect model” as considered by Ulhaq. Actually, “P_raw” refer to the p-value before correction, and “P_FDR” refer to the p-value after correction for multiple comparisons using Benjamini–Hochberg (BH) method to control the false discovery rate (FDR). As far as we can see, the updated results of Ulhaq did not make corrections for multiple comparisons.

• References

• 1 Ulhaq ZS. Update on “Associations of estrogen receptor alpha gene polymorphisms with type 2 diabetes mellitus and metabolic syndrome: a systematic review and meta-analysis”. Horm Metab Res 2020; 52: 67-70
• 2 Yang J, Han R, Chen M. et al. Associations of estrogen receptor alpha gene polymorphisms with type 2 diabetes mellitus and metabolic syndrome: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Horm Metab Res 2018; 50: 469-477
• 3 Akhmad S, Madiyan M, Hastuti P. et al. Estrogen receptor alpha (Esr) gene polymorphism as risk factor for type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2dm) in Javenese menopause women of Indonesia. Bangladesh J Med Sci. 2013; 12: 172-179
• 4 Ereqat S, Cauchi S, Eweidat K. et al. Estrogen receptor 1 gene polymorphisms (PvuII and XbaI) are associated with type 2 diabetes in Palestinian women. Peer J 2019; 7: e7164