Letter to the Editor Reply to Bovet et al. Bovet et al. provide useful additional information that is certainly relevant to the broader context of our article (1). As our review and our search terms focused on the more commonly used socioeconomic status (SES) indicators (income/wealth, education, occupation or composite), our search criteria did not capture the paper mentioned by Bovet et al. (2), which used type of school (public vs. private) as SES indicator. Despite our focus on the more common SES indicators, our search strategy identified one study on children that did use school type as SES indicator (3), because the abstract and title of this study did include terms that matched our search terms, while the Bovet et al. study did not. School type may well become a more widely accepted and validated SES proxy in the future and should then be included in future systematic reviews, but at present, more research is needed to examine the validity of the measure. An encouraging example of one such validation, if in a different context, is by Piovesan et al. (4). Nevertheless, the findings of the Bovet et al. paper (2) still support our conclusion that – based on the still very limited amount of evidence – obesity/overweight among children in low and middle income countries appears to remain more prevalent in higher SES groups (proxied by private school attendance in [2]) compared with those in lower SES groups (proxied by public school attendance). We also note that even though only one study in Africa fulfilled our search/selection criteria on children, our review did include six studies undertaken in Africa (including one in Seychelles) on adults. Other studies presented in the letter were published either prior to the period we covered (5) or after (6,7). We did not review (8) because it was undertaken in developed countries, although we have cited it (see ref#50 in [1]), where we found appropriate. References 1. Dinsa GD, Goryakin Y, Fumagalli E, Suhrcke M. Obesity and socioeconomic status in developing countries: a systematic review. Obes Rev 2012; 13: 1067–1079. 2. Bovet P, Chiolero A, Madeleine G, Paccaud F. Prevalence of overweight and underweight in public and private schools in the Seychelles. Int J Pediatr Obes 2010; 5: 274–278. 3. Groeneveld IF, Solomons NW, Doak CM. Nutritional status of urban schoolchildren of high and low socioeconomic status in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. Rev Panam Salud Publica 2007; 22: 169–177. 4. Piovesan C, Pádua MC, Ardenghi TM, Mendes FM, Bonini GC. Can type of school be used as an alternative indicator of socioeconomic status in dental caries studies? A cross-sectional study. BMC Med Res Methodol 2011; 11: 37. doi:10.1186/1471- 2288-11-37. 5. Cole TJ, Bellizzi MC, Flegal KM, Dietz WH. Establishing a standard definition for child overweight and obesity worldwide: international survey. BMJ 2000; 320: 1240–1243. 6. Wrotniak BH, Malete L, Maruapula SD et al. Association between socioeconomic status indicators and obesity in adolescent students in Botswana, an African country in rapid nutrition tran- sition. Pediatr Obes 2012; 7: e9–e13. 7. Howe LD, Galobardes B, Matijasevich A et al. Measuring socio-economic position for epidemiological studies in low- and middle-income countries: a methods of measurement in epidemi- ology paper. Int J Epidemiol 2012; 41: 871–886. 8. Shrewsbury V, Wardle J. Socioeconomic status and adiposity in childhood: a systematic review of cross-sectional studies 1990- 2005. Obesity (Silver Spring) 2008; 16: 275–284. G. D. Dinsa Norwich Medical School University of East Anglia Norwich UK g.deye@uea.ac.uk Y. Goryakin European Centre on Health of Societies in Transition Department of Health Services Research and Policy London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine London UK ygoryakin@yahoo.com E. Fumagalli Norwich Medical School University of East Anglia Norwich UK e.fumagalli@uea.ac.uk M. Suhrcke Norwich Medical School University of East Anglia Norwich UK UKCRC Centre for Diet and Activity Research (CEDAR) Institute of Public Health Cambridge UK E-mail: m.suhrcke@uea.ac.uk obesity reviews doi: 10.1111/j.1467-789X.2012.01027.x 1081 © 2012 The Author obesity reviews © 2012 International Association for the Study of Obesity 13, 1081, November 2012