Charu Sharma,1 Abubaker Suliman,2 Sania Mazin AL Hamad,3 Javed Yasin,1 Mohamed Abuzakouk,4 Juma AlKaabi,1 Elhadi Husein Aburawi3

1Department of Internal Medicine, College of Medicine and Health Sciences, United Arab Emirates University, Al Ain, 15551, United Arab Emirates; 2Institute of Public Health, College of Medicine and Health Sciences, United Arab Emirates University, Al Ain, 15551, United Arab Emirates; 3Department of Pediatrics, College of Medicine and Health Sciences, United Arab Emirates University, Al Ain, 15551, United Arab Emirates; 4Department of Immunology & Allergy, Cleveland Clinic, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

Correspondence: Elhadi Husein Aburawi, Department of Pediatrics, College of Medicine and Health Sciences, United Arab Emirates University, Al Ain, 15551, United Arab Emirates, Email [email protected]

We appreciate your concerns regarding some aspects like lifestyle, dietary patterns, and socioeconomic factors mentioned in the study.

UAE has undergone a wide transformation in the economy, lifestyle, dietary patterns, etc. leading to high rates of overnutrition.1

There has been enormous literature available which documents the impact of these factors in UAE nationals' health and occurrence of cardiovascular diseases.2–6 However, not much data are available on youths who are especially vulnerable to the complications of these disorders and are generally less engaged in health-promoting and monitoring programs. Therefore, this unique study was designed to study the youth population to examine the association between the biomarkers for dyslipidemia, inflammation, and oxidative stress with endothelial dysfunction in obese UAE nationals.

Thanks for the suggestion, we have performed many anthropometric measurements and analyses including the waist circumference and neck circumference. Furthermore, we have measured the body fat composition using the TANITA TBF-300 machine. All these are mentioned in the methods section of the article.7,8

We agree with your suggestions, and are in the process of planning future longitudinal studies which will establish the clinical relevance of these biomarkers for cardiovascular disease.

Thanks for the feedback, we agree that UAE has a rich ethnic diversity and further stratification of data based upon the ethnicity would be of great interest. But this study mainly focused on the UAE national population, not any other ethnic group. Definitely, future studies on different ethnic groups and more variable and larger sample sizes would enable us to understand the UAE as whole. We are continuously studying the genetic factors link with the UAE population.9–11

In conclusion, we really thank the authors of the letter to the Editor for their valuable comments and some future insights to perform studies in the UAE.

The authors report no conflicts of interest in this communication.

1. Al-Haddad FH, Little BB, Abdul Ghafoor AG. Childhood obesity in United Arab Emirates schoolchildren: a national study. Ann Hum Biol. 2005;32(1):72–79. doi:10.1080/03014460400027425

2. Al Sabbah H, Assaf EA, Al-Jawaldeh A, et al. Nutrition situation analysis in the UAE: a review study. Nutrients. 2023;15(2):363. doi:10.3390/nu15020363

3. Takshe AA, Khatib R, Contu D, Shehaiber S, Alkaabi M. UAE university students’ dietary practices and lifestyles at times of covid-19: a cross sectional study. Curr Nutr Food Sci. 2022;10:1.

4. Mezhal F, Oulhaj A, Abdulle A, et al. The interrelationship and accumulation of cardiometabolic risk factors amongst young adults in the United Arab Emirates: the UAE healthy future study. Diabetol Metab Syndr. 2021;13(1):140. doi:10.1186/s13098-021-00758-w

5. Gariballa S, Al‐Bluwi G, Yasin J. Mechanisms and effect of increased physical activity on general and abdominal obesity and associated metabolic risk factors in a community with very high rates of general and abdominal obesity. Antioxidants. 2023;12:826. doi:10.3390/antiox12040826

6. Gariballa S, Al‐Bluwi G, Yasin J. Increased fruit and vegetable consumption mitigates oxidative damage and associated inflammatory response in obese subjects independent of body weight change. Nutrients. 2023;15:1638. doi:10.3390/nu15071638

7. Yasin J, Sharma C, Hashim MJ, Al Hamed S, AlKaabi J, Aburawi EH. Cross-sectional association between body fat composition and biomarkers of inflammation and endothelial dysfunction in children with overweight/obesity. Diabetes Metab Syndr Obes. 2023;16:483–493. doi:10.2147/DMSO.S390071

8. Sharma C, Hassan A, Hamad SA, Yasin J, Alkaabi J, Aburawi EH. Distribution and association of cardiometabolic risk factors among youth from al ain city, united Arab Emirates. Cureus. 2023;15(11):e48681. doi:10.7759/cureus.48681

9. Bizzari S, Nair P, Hana S, et al. Spectrum of genetic disorders and gene variants in the United Arab Emirates national population: insights from the CTGA database. Front Genet. 2023;14:1177204. doi:10.3389/fgene.2023.1177204

10. Rahma AT, Ali BR, Patrinos GP, et al. Knowledge, attitudes, and perceptions of the multi-ethnic population of the United Arab Emirates on genomic medicine and genetic testing. Hum Genomics. 2023;17(1):63. doi:10.1186/s40246-023-00509-0

11. Alqasrawi M, Al-Mahayri Z, Alblooshi H, Alsafar H, Ali BR. Utilizing Pharmacogenomic Data for a Safer Use of Statins among the Emirati Population. Curr. Vasc. Pharmacol. 2024;22:1.