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  • Response to Letter to the Editor
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Response to ‘The importance of nuance in statements about methods for human energy expenditure estimation that use motion sensors’

European Journal of Clinical Nutrition volume 71, page 1138 (2017)Cite this article

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In his letter to the editor,1 Dr van Hees has commented on our paper entitled ‘Usefulness of motion sensors to estimate energy expenditure in children and adults: a narrative review of studies using DLW’.2 At the onset, Dr van Hees mentioned that ‘Unfortunately, the data used to generate the six figures is not supported by citations to the original publications on which the data points are based. I am sure that an acknowledgment of the original work would have been appreciated’. The author may have missed this information by lapse. All the original studies were recognized in the Supplementary Material, as mentioned in the first paragraph of page 334 of our paper ‘all the articles published until August 2016 (Supplementary Material)’, and after the references list ‘Supplementary Information accompanies this paper on European Journal of Clinical Nutrition website (http://www.nature.com/ejcn)’.

The authors recognize some pertinence of the theoretical issues raised by Dr van Hees and related implications on the statements that are generated from the existent literature and our review. Regarding the second comment raised by the author that a ‘simplified statement should have been specific to the Actiheart and cannot be generalized to other accelerometer-based methods’, there must be some caution when looking at these nuances in such a demanding manner. For example, when reading some of the published papers by the author,3, 4 the message that utilizing the raw data by using the accelerometer signal patterns to identify specific behaviors is superior to the traditional count-based information is evident. However, these algorithms were created for specific accelerometers; thus, in a similar way, it could not be generalized that this is an advantage to all accelerometers’ brands, as this is yet to be tested. We took this example just to illustrate that sometimes being further precise can limit the message and the goal that is being pursued.

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References

  1. van Hees VT . The importance of nuance in statements about methods for human energy expenditure estimation that use motion sensors. Eur J Clin Nutr 2017, e-pub ahead of print 03 May 2017; doi:10.1038/ejcn.2017.65.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Exercise and Health Laboratory, CIPER, Faculdade de Motricidade Humana, Universidade de Lisboa, Estrada da Costa, Cruz-Quebrada, Portugal

    L B Sardinha & P B Júdice

Authors
  1. L B Sardinha
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  2. P B Júdice
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Correspondence to L B Sardinha.

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The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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Supplementary Information accompanies this paper on European Journal of Clinical Nutrition website

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Sardinha, L., Júdice, P. Response to ‘The importance of nuance in statements about methods for human energy expenditure estimation that use motion sensors’. Eur J Clin Nutr 71, 1138 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/ejcn.2017.118

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