Review for 10.1186/s12876-020-01502-w (2020)

Reviewer’s report
Title: 
A hypocaloric high-protein diet supplemented with 
β
-cryptoxanthin
improves non-alcoholic fatty liver disease: A randomized controlled trial
Version: 
1 
Date: 
25 Sep 2020
Reviewer's report:
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Please overwrite this text when adding your comments to the authors. Dear
Authors, Thank you for your endeavor performing this research.please answer
my issues and questions in some points
1. What was the reason for researcher to add carotenoid to High protein diet? Is
there any pathophysiologic base or animal study for this decision? Why you did
not select another antioxidant to HP-Diet?
2. In method the explanation of method referred to other extract of this research.
It is not useful and reasonable. I suggest to delete these two first lines
3. In order to evaluate the blinding of the study, patients were asked to guess
their allocated interventions at study endpoint. Is there any scientific evidence for
this approach?
4. What do you mean by "clinical remission rate"? reduction in steatosis is not a
clinical remission
5. However, compared to those in the control group, patients in the HP-diet
6. group only achieved higher 12-week reductions in serum levels of ALT and
GGT: This paragraph is confusing
7. 
The potential safety of this treatment regimen for patients with NAFLD is
indicated by the relatively low rate (i.e., 21.7%) and benign nature: I believe that
it is not a true conclusion
8. Patients may understand something about their diet; however, I believe that it
is not important to be mentioned
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Is the study design appropriate to answer the research question (including the use
of appropriate controls), and are the conclusions supported by the evidence
presented?
Yes
Are the methods sufficiently described to allow the study to be repeated?
Yes
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No
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Yes
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from apparent manipulation?
Yes