Reply to 'Comment on 'BAG-1 as a biomarker in early breast cancer prognosis: a systematic review with meta-analyses''.

We thank Sauerbrei and Haeussler[1] for their interest in our paper[2] and their methodological comments. Our aim was to undertake these analyses and draw some conclusions from the available literature regarding the prognostic significance of BAG-1 in breast cancer, given multiple studies. We felt that this was important, particularly since BAG-1 is already included in multi-gene assays widely used as part of routine clinical practice and due to ongoing investigation into the possibility of inhibition of BAG-1 function as a potential therapeutic strategy. We did not use the supplementary information provided within the REMARK Explanation and Elaboration paper.[3] We provided our interpretation whether details within the REMARK checklist were included in the papers and, as we highlighted, the literature reviewed was heterogeneous and with a range in study quality. We believe our conclusions were drawn with appropriate caveats to highlight this.