Reply to: Letter to the editor of Heliyon re Comparative study of the antioxidant capability of EDTA and Irganox. [Heliyon. 2023; 9(5): e16064]

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to Dr. Jens Smiatek for his interest in our work and his thorough analysis of our article.His insightful comments have been highly valuable, and we have carefully considered the raised points.The calculations carried out by Dr. Smiatek regarding the molecular conformations and structures of EDTA and the findings are indeed important additions to the topic.In our manuscript, the primary objective was to assess whether EDTA can readily donate a hydrogen atom and how this process is going.In line with Dr. Smiatek's observations, we acknowledge that the initial structure in our calculations assumed a net charge of zero.Furthermore, we have carried out the calculations in gas phase.Thus, a simple, but still reasonable approximation was used.It has to be noted, that this approach was used before in various instances in the literature before [1].Although we agree that this approach is not fully capable to describe every detail of the system but still can provide valuable information about the radical scavenging ability of EDTA.Throughout our calculations, we maintained consistency with the charge state and focused exclusively on hydrogen donation ability, rather than metal chelation.Our study aimed to evaluate EDTA's hydrogen atom donation ability through three key mechanisms: hydrogen atom transfer (HAT), single-electron transfer followed by proton transfer (SETPT), and sequential proton loss electron transfer (SPLET).We would like to note that Dr. Smiatek's calculations have provided valuable insights, enabling us to further explore the antioxidant potential of EDTA in different charge states (0, -2, -3) and compare the corresponding effects.But these results do not erase our previous findings, instead they complement those.