In Reply We have read the Letters1-3 concerning our article on autoimmune thyroiditis (AIT) with interest and thank the different authors for their time and effort. There were many positive reactions to the contents of the article.
In particular, it is important to address Baethge’s Letter1 because it allows an even more differentiated evaluation of the data. In brief, he mainly replicates our results, and in his own calculations applying another model (fixed effects), he finds that with this model, odds ratios are smaller. He emphasizes that the study contributing the largest number of participants with epidemiologic data does not show an effect.