Fasting Duration and Blood Pressure in Children: Reply

We thank Dr. Chen and Dr. Mpody¹  for their interest in our article²  and for highlighting important aspects of our study for readers. We concur with the authors regarding percentile categorizations, the nonlinear dose–response relationship, and the identification of cutpoints based on the distribution of the primary predictor. This point was raised during the process of manuscript review, and in response, we provided a sensitivity analysis using a 2-h fasting duration interval to complement the 4-h quartile analysis. Analysis with smaller time intervals could certainly have been performed, yet we eschewed that option because of word count limitations and because the results would likely have remained consistent with the nonlinear relationship shown in the locally estimated scatterplot smoothing curve on the scatterplot.²  As mentioned in the article, we weighed fractional polynomial transformation versus fasting...