Review for 10.1186/1471-230X-9-9 (2009)

Reviewer's report
Title:Fatty acid composition of subcutaneous adipose tissue and gastric
mucosa: is there a relation with gastric ulceration?
Version: 1Date:3 July 2008
Reviewer: Caroline M Pond
Reviewer's report:
Although negative results are always less attractive than differences, these data
might be used if they were better analysed and presented. The following points
should be considered in rewriting the paper.
The authors do not seem very familiar with describing and analyzing GLC data.
The extraction methods used probably released fatty acids from both
triacylglycerols and phospholipids, though they do not actually say so. Presenting
raw GLC traces is not appropriate, especially with such brief figure captions.
Although modern equipment now allows quantification of fatty acids present at a
low concentrations, the biological implications of their presence (except in the
case of very toxic fatty acids) is far from clear, and maybe minimal. Therefore
small differences in levels of minor fatty acids should not be overinterpreted.
The naming of fatty acids assumes too much detailed knowledge of fatty acid
terminology than is appropriate for this journal, is applied inconsistently and in
places incorrectly. For example, in Table 2 C20:0 is also styled C20:00.
Monoenoic fatty acids are shown as :01 not :1. The suffix n- is not in italics as it
should be and not used consistently. The terms 12c, 13c, 14c and 18cd are not
adequately explained. C14:1, 5t etc. are very confusingly expressed, and some
are actually wrong.
Some of the description of the subjects currently at the beginning of ‘Results’
should be in the methods section. Even the human anatomy is wrong! Adults do
not have an umbilicus cord.
In several places, Helicobacter is not written in italics; there are several spelling
mistakes and tenses are confused.
Standard errors would be better as ± rather than in brackets. The titles to the
Tables should be fuller with detailed information about N numbers. The many
abbreviations should be explained in the titles the tables or as footnotes.
The number of significant p values is only slightly more than would be expected
by chance alone with this number of statistical tests. Nearly all relate to fatty
acids present at very low concentrations, at which errors in quantification are
larger and biological significance probably minimal.
The scientific bases for expecting that the fatty acid composition of adipose
tissue lipids might alter infectivity and the development of overt pathology, or that
the gastric mucosa would share fatty acid composition with adipose tissue are
not explained. The extensive literature about the relationship between dietary
and circulating fatty acids and immune function is not reviewed. Important recent
papers about the biology of Helicobacter are not cited including:
Monack, D.M., A. Mueller, and S. Falkow. 2004. Persistent bacterial infections:
The interface of the pathogen and the host immune system. Nature Reviews
Microbiology. 2:747-765.
Mueller, A., J. O'Rourke, P. Chu, C.C. Kim, P. Sutton, A. Lee, and S. Falkow.
2003. Protective immunity against Helicobacter is characterized by a unique
transcriptional signature. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of
the United States of America. 100:12289-12294.
Level of interest: An article of limited interest
Quality of written English: Needs some language corrections before being
published
Statistical review: Yes, and I have assessed the statistics in my report.
Declaration of competing interests:
I declare that I have no competing interests.