Hi Dustin–

Thank you for your comments and paying such close attention to this article.

1. I’m not sure why I cited Refsum et al. for the idea that B12 deficiency is rare in India—the study certainly doesn’t suggest that and I’ve removed that citation and modified the statement. Thanks for catching that.

2. I was reporting the percentages of healthy subjects with elevated homocysteine and MMA as listed in Table 1 of Refsum et al. Go to the bottom of the table and you’ll see I copied the percentages just as they list them. Regarding the average B12 level, I converted 160 pmol/l to 216 pg/ml (conversion factor of 1.35). I list B12 values in pg/ml throughout the VeganHealth.org site. I’ve now added the measurement to table header to prevent confusion.

I had a few questions for you based on the information you have presented here:

1. You said: “B12 deficiency has been found with relatively high frequency among vegetarian Indian immigrants in England, while it is supposedly uncommon among native Indians with identical dietary patterns (3, 4).”

Question: Your fourth citation, Refsum et al., indicates that B12 deficiency is common in India but here you state that it is “uncommon among native Indians”. Is this just a typo? Should it not read that it is common? Or did you mistakenly include Refsum et al. there when in reality you just meant to include Albert et al. (the third citation) there?

2. You indicate that Refsum et al. used 27 lacto-ovo subjects and 36 non-veg subjects. I feel this is also a mistake because it states, in their article, that the subjects on a vegetarian diet involved 27% of the 63 healthy subjects. Thus, I feel as if the correct number of lacto-ovo healthy subjects should have been listed at 17 rather than 27 lacto-ovo healthy subjects, as 17 represents 27 percent of the 63 healthy subjects. This would then mean that 47 healthy subjects would have been non-veg. Or am I missing something here?

Additionally, for the lacto-ovo and non-veg healthy subjects you list their combined average serum B12 at 216. I was just wondering if you could explain to me how it was you arrived at this figure? In Refsum et al.’s study, on table 1 of page 235, it states that this figure should be 160.

Lastly, it would be greatly appreciated if you could please explain to me how you concluded that 46% of the healthy subjects had a serum B12 < than 203.

Thanks in advance for your response. Look forward to hearing from you.