Review for 10.1186/s12876-020-01467-w (2020)

Reviewer’ s report
Title: Carbon tetrachloride (CCl4) accelerated development of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease
(NAFLD)/steatohepatitis (NASH) in MS-NASH mice fed western diet supplemented with fructose(WDF)
Version: 0Date: 14 Jul 2020
Reviewer's report:
Thank you for this submission.
Authors are evaluating the impact of low dose CCL4 in enhancing fibrosis in a metabolic - NASHmodel. Current limitations of models are related to duration of treatment (i.e. cost) and / or therelative lack of fibrosis and/or absence of a metabolic phenotype. As such, there is a need todevelop new or better models to study NAFLD / NASH
Comment:
Description of the murine studies are confusing - please provide a clearer description of eachanimal study - i.e timing of injection, diet etc.Importantly, why are both CCl4 models of different duration - how can one compare these?Metabolic phenotype - this is one of the key selling points of the model. Please providecorroborative data on glucose / insulin levels over time; does CCL4 treatment reduces glucose /insulin levels in association with weight loss and reduced liver / body weight ratio? If so, this doesnot go with human disease.Liver fibrosis - please provide hydroxyproline measurementLiver injury / death - please provide an assessment of cell death (e.g. activated caspase 3/7)It would also be important to provide corroborative data on: serum and liver cytokine levels or
expression (e.g. TNFa, IL6, IFNg, IL4), ROS / antioxidant levels and gene expression for fibrosis
markers
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Are the methods appropriate and well described?
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NoDoes the work include the necessary controls?
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Yes
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I am able to assess the statisticsQuality of written English
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Acceptable
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