Reply: To PMID 22588434.

We thank the reader for his inter.est in our published manuscript.1 We agree that there is paucity of research on such subject "fasting and cancer" and the need for more research and different designs. Definitely, the two suggested questions are very valid and would add value to our findings. However, they were not planned as part of our assessment. As the study was conducted in 2009, it would be dif.ficult to perform accurate follow on questions to report patients experience following the end of Ramadan that dates five years back. This is more confounded by the study populations who are cancer patients and some of them had metastatic or poor prognosis dis.ease with very limited survival. A recently published article by Tas et al in the Japanese Journal of Clinical Oncology, may be helpful in this regard.2 It reports the experience in a different setting and a different country; Turkey. The suggested questions deserve to be part of any future research on the topic of "Fasting among Cancer patients during Ramadan".

We thank the reader for his interest in our published manuscript.1 We agree that there is paucity of research on such subject “fasting and cancer” and the need for more research and different designs.

Definitely, the two suggested questions are very valid and would add value to our findings. However, they were not planned as part of our assessment. As the study was conducted in 2009, it would be difficult to perform accurate follow on questions to report patients experience following the end of Ramadan that dates five years back. This is more confounded by the study populations who are cancer patients and some of them had metastatic or poor prognosis disease with very limited survival. A recently published article by Tas et al in the Japanese Journal of Clinical Oncology, may be helpful in this regard.2 It reports the experience in a different setting and a different country; Turkey.

The suggested questions deserve to be part of any future research on the topic of “Fasting among Cancer patients during Ramadan”.