Response to: Prevalence of Anaemia in Children Diagnosed with Pneumonia in a Tertiary Hospital in Quito, Ecuador: Correspondence

Dear editor, This letter is in response to Chaudhary, Shrestha, and Pathak, who highlighted various aspects of our previous manuscript "Prevalence of Anaemia in Children Diagnosed with Pneumonia in a Tertiary Hospital in Quito, Ecuador." I want to respond to each point referred to in a similar extension as used by the authors. We agreed on the fact that it is prompt to conclude in nutritional deficiencies as a risk factor to suffer pneumonia in Ecuadorian children that is why we express this conclusion as a possibility. Nevertheless, as evidenced in the meta-analysis presented by Jackson et al., the Odds Ratio (OR) meta-estimate for under nutrition as a risk factor for acute lower respiratory infections was 4.5 (95% CI 2.1-9.5)1. To add, in the same paper, the OR meta-estimate for anaemia, vitamin D deficiency, and zinc supplementation, was 3.9 (95% CI 2.4-6.3), 7.3 (95% CI 2.5 to 21.5), and 0.5 (95% CI 0.3 to 0.9), respectively 1. Moreover, in a study conducted in Malawi including 9 533 children, severe malnutrition and moderate malnutrition were associated not only with a pneumonia risk but with an increased risk of inpatient mortality, with Odds Ratios (OR) of 4.63 (3.08, 6.97) and 1.73 (1.21, 2.48) respectively. Therefore, there is supporting evidence globally of the suggested risk 2. I am glad that the authors in the letter bring to the table a discussion of pneumonia diagnosis. In our study, the evaluation of pneumonia started with the clinical assessment including parameters with an acceptable sensitivity (Sen%) or specificity (Spe%), such as; fever on examination (Sen% 47, Spe% 68), history of fever (Sen% 92, Spe% 21), tachypnoea (Sen% 13, Spe% 95), rhonchi (Sen% 26, Spe% 98), crackles (Sen% 43, Spe% 73), wheezing (Sen% 4, Spe% 98) (3). However, as referred to in the original paper, the evaluation was not limited to these factors "Hypoxemia, defined as a sustained saturation of peripheral oxygen (SpO2)