The Author's Response: Genetic Contributions to Childhood Obesity: Association of Candidate Gene Polymorphisms and Overweight/Obesity in Korean Preschool Children

Thank you for the comments on our publication.1 We agree with the author's perspective to a certain degree, but there are some issues that need to be clarified. As the authors mentioned, the gene symbol of angiotensin II type 2 receptor (OMIM: 300034) is not AT2 but AGTR2. We just used the common abbreviation ‘AT2’ for the angiotensin II type 2 receptor, not considering the gene representation. Additionally, it seems meaningful to analyze the genotypes in each gender group separately as suggested. Unfortunately, we could not further reanalyze the genotypes in each gender group due to the small sample size. However, we have already confirmed no differences among the groups with respect to gender among the three groups. We may not conclude the genetic variation in the AGTR2 gene is not related with the incidence of overweight, but the results should be interpreted with caution as mentioned earlier. Regarding the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium test, differences between observed and expected frequencies of genotype variants are relatively common in clinical studies.2 In particular the test may be inappropriate in complex survey designs.3 Thank you again.