JerMa88/BMC_Gastroenterology_Peer_Reviews huggingface dataset:
Review for 10.1186/1471-230X-13-107 (2013)

Reviewer's report
Title:Mini-Mental State Examination in patients with hepatic encephalopathy and
liver cirrhosis. A prospective, quantified electroencephalography study.
Version: 1Date:21 February 2013
Reviewer: George Therapondos
Reviewer's report:
This is a well written manuscript that addresses an interesting question about
hepatic encephalopathy. It includes a reasonably large cohort of patients from an
academic center and the data are detailed and appropriately analyzed.
The conclusions are supported by the data.
Major compulsory revisions:
None
Minor essential revisions:
The authors acknowledge that there is no gold standard for the diagnosis of
minimal hepatic encephalopathy. However, their use of EEG in defining minimal
HE makes the reader think that this is universally accepted. I would like to see a
clarification or an addition to the discussion section that addresses the fact that
the minimal HE group in their study may not necessarily be accurate. Overall,
this point however, does not change the conclusions of the study which I believe
are accurate.
Page 6, line 4: Missing 's' from Patient
Page 7, EEG analysis: Iceland instead of Island
I do not think the ROC curves need to be shown- the explanation ion the results
section is adequate.
It may be useful to comment that even when results were found to be statistically
significant, the numeric difference between MMSE scores was small and unlikely
to be clinically useful.
Level of interest: An article of importance in its field
Quality of written English: Acceptable
Statistical review: Yes, and I have assessed the statistics in my report.
Declaration of competing interests:
I declare that I have no competing interests
Review for 10.1186/1471-230X-13-107 (2013)

Reviewer's report
Title:Mini-Mental State Examination in patients with hepatic encephalopathy and
liver cirrhosis. A prospective, quantified electroencephalography study.
Version: 1Date:8 April 2013
Reviewer: Michele Malaguarnera
Reviewer's report:
Major Compulsory Revision
1. The Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE) is a test that has not been used a
lot in cirrhotic patients and in hepatology in general. It is often used in the elderly
for screening and for its extreme simplicity in the evaluation of cognitive activities.
It is influenced by age and other factors. However, this test is lacking of
information on memory, orientation and spatial memory. In fact, for example
Malaguarnera et al. (2007) have used also other types of neuropsychological
tests such as: Trail making test, Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale—Revised
(WAIS-R), Auditory Verbal Learning (AVL) (Malaguarnera M 2008), block design
test, and symbol digit modalities test, Logical Memory (Paragraph Recall),
Everyday Memory Questionnaire (EMQ) (Malaguarnera 2011) give more detailed
information. This should be challenged within the limits of the work.
2. ammonaemia is one of the parameters that affects hepatic encephalopathy
and cognitive activity in cirrhotic patients, why was not correlated with the
MMSE? This would be really important.
3. It is important a more careful classification of overt and covert hepatic
encephalopathy. Authors should decide whether to adopt the West-Haven
classification or to discriminate hepatic encephalopathy in overt and covert. I
advice you to to read those article if you did not:
1) Lauridsen MM, Thiele M, Kimer N, Vilstrup H. The continuous reaction times
method for diagnosing, grading, and monitoring minimal/covert hepatic
encephalopathy. Metab Brain Dis. 2013 Jan 10. [Epub ahead of print]
2) Kappus MR, Bajaj JS. Covert hepatic encephalopathy: not as minimal as you
might think. Clin Gastroenterol Hepatol. 2012 Nov;10(11):1208-19. doi:
10.1016/j.cgh.2012.05.026. Epub 2012 Jun 19.
3) Mullen KD, Prakash RK. Management of covert hepatic encephalopathy. Clin
Liver Dis. 2012 Feb;16(1):91-3. doi: 10.1016/j.cld.2011.12.006. Epub 2012 Jan
13.
Minor essential Revisions
3. Review misspellings (for example the title: “Discussion”)
Level of interest: An article of importance in its field
Quality of written English: Acceptable
Statistical review: Yes, and I have assessed the statistics in my report.
Declaration of competing interests:
I declare that I have no competing interests
Review for 10.1186/1471-230X-13-107 (2013)

Reviewer's report
Title:Mini-Mental State Examination in patients with hepatic encephalopathy and
liver cirrhosis. A prospective, quantified electroencephalography study.
Version: 2Date:23 May 2013
Reviewer: Michele Malaguarnera
Reviewer's report:
the article is greatly improved. your corrections are adequates and, therefore it is
suitable for pubblication
Level of interest: An article of importance in its field
Quality of written English: Acceptable
Statistical review: Yes, and I have assessed the statistics in my report.
Declaration of competing interests:
I declare that I have no competing interests
Review for 10.1186/1471-230X-13-107 (2013)

Reviewer's report
Title:Mini-Mental State Examination in patients with hepatic encephalopathy and
liver cirrhosis. A prospective, quantified electroencephalography study.
Version: 2Date:26 May 2013
Reviewer: George Therapondos
Reviewer's report:
No further comments. All my points have been addressed.
Level of interest: An article of importance in its field
Quality of written English: Acceptable
Statistical review: Yes, and I have assessed the statistics in my report.
Review for 10.1186/1471-230X-13-106 (2013)

Reviewer's report
Title:Nitroglycerin 0.4% ointment vs placebo in the treatment of pain resulting
from chronic anal fissure: a phase 3, randomized, double-blind,
placebo-controlled study
Version: 2Date:6 September 2012
Reviewer: Yinghong Wang
Reviewer's report:
Major compulsory revisions
Reviewer #1: This is a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial
comparing nitroglycerin 0.4% ointment with placebo for pain associated with
chronic anal fissure. It is a large series of 247 patients enrolled. The data show
that nitroglycerin 0.4% ointment effectively reduced chronic anal fissure pain
compared with placebo in patients with moderate-to-severe CAF pain.
1. The analgesic effect on the anal fissure pain from nitroglycerin 0.4% ointment
has been well known and studied previously, this study is not adding any new
findings to the existed evidence.
2. How would the finding of this study change the clinical practice? As
nitroglycerin 0.4% ointment has already been approved by FDA to use for anal
fissure pain regardless of its severity. Especially the healing of the fissure was
not included in this study which is one of the most important therapeutic aspects
of the treatment.
3. Not sure how authors decided on the duration of 21 days, given majority of the
studies used 8 weeks of treatment, especially there is high recurrence rate.
4. The placebo effect is almost comparable to the nitroglycerin group including
the primary and secondary end points, with the small (<10mm) but significant
difference between the two groups in the VAS score change on post-hoc
analysis, I don’t see the clinical significance.
5. Authors reported that the VAS pain score is recorded as 24 hours average
during days 14-18, however, no details about how the patients were supposed to
record their VAS score during 24 hours period. The timing of the recording and
its association with defecation is critical to change the overall analysis.
6. Authors used days 14-18 as the evaluation time point, which covered only ¼ of
the overall study period. This is quite different from other similar studies, which
compared several times point from each week on the treatment to minimize the
biase.
7. In Table 2, authors used both SD and SE, why there is an inconsistency?
Level of interest: An article of limited interest
Quality of written English: Acceptable
Statistical review: Yes, but I do not feel adequately qualified to assess the
statistics.
Declaration of competing interests:
'I declare that I have no competing interests'
Review for 10.1186/1471-230X-13-106 (2013)

Reviewer's report
Title:Nitroglycerin 0.4% ointment vs placebo in the treatment of pain resulting
from chronic anal fissure: a phase 3, randomized, double-blind,
placebo-controlled study
Version: 2Date:4 December 2012
Reviewer: H Karanlik
Reviewer's report:
In placebo controlled studies, using term of "phase 3" is discussible. The term of
"phase 3" should remove from headline and manuscript.
were tubes of NTG weighed in the study. If not, how was compliance with the
treatment or placebo assessed?
What pain were the patients asked to record on the VAS scale? worst pain,
avarage pain, in a day or in a defecation?
Expansion of the findings in previous similar studies may help the reader place
this trial in the context of previous work.
how you can explain frequency of headache in placebo group (70% in placebo vs
47.6 in NTG group). The discussion around headaches and dose of NTG would
benefit from clarification.
Did patients use any carrier to apply NTG and was it the same as the control?
The tubes for both ointments can be identical. This is blinded study. In this way,
authors should clarify tubes were not identical for patients and doctors?
What did you use as placebo?
Aside from the above comments the authors are to be congratulated on an
interesting and well performed study.
Review for 10.1186/1471-230X-13-106 (2013)

Reviewer's report
Title:Nitroglycerin 0.4% ointment vs placebo in the treatment of pain resulting
from chronic anal fissure: a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study
Version: 3Date:5 June 2013
Reviewer: Yinghong Wang
Reviewer's report:
The concerns had been addressed on the revision.
Level of interest: An article of importance in its field
Quality of written English: Acceptable
Statistical review: Yes, but I do not feel adequately qualified to assess the
statistics.
Declaration of competing interests:
'I declare that I have no competing interests'
Review for 10.1186/1471-230X-13-105 (2013)

Reviewer's report
Title:Hepatocellular carcinoma associated with Budd-Chiari syndrome: imaging
features and transcatheter arterial chemoembolization
Version: 2Date:23 January 2013
Reviewer: Aurelie Plessier
Reviewer's report:
Major revisions:
The authors report 5% of HCC in a retrospective serie of 246 patients. Little is
known on HCC prevalence, screening tools and treatments in BCS, and this
study is informative on these 3 points. Nevertheless, the authors scarcely
describe the methodology of nodules and HCC screening in the whole serie. How
many patients had an MRI or CT scan on the 246 to detect enhanced nodules?
how can we be sure that patients with benign nodules had true benign nodules
when we clearly know that distinction between begnign and HCC is the real
difficulty in this setting. What was the median follow up of patients with bengn
nodules?
Minor revisions
Spelling mistakes:
P 3
P 4
P7
P13
Table 1
line 3 is Not very informative
Level of interest: An article of importance in its field
Quality of written English: Needs some language corrections before being
published
Statistical review: No, the manuscript does not need to be seen by a
statistician.
Declaration of competing interests:
I declare that I have no competing interests
Review for 10.1186/1471-230X-13-105 (2013)

Reviewer's report
Title:Hepatocellular carcinoma associated with Budd-Chiari syndrome: imaging
features and transcatheter arterial chemoembolization
Version: 2Date:28 March 2013
Reviewer: marco montorsi
Reviewer's report:
Major comments
The authors describe their experience regarding the diagnosis and therapy of
patients with Budd-Chiari syndrome (BCS) with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).
The population includes 14 patients with HCC. The purpose of the paper is
mainly to show imaging features of such patients, as stated in the abstract.
However, the authors focus the attention not only on imaging features of
diagnosis and therapy, but also on the effectiveness of the different treatments
(TACE, RFA, resection, transplantation, etc...). They conclude that TACE can
effectively control tumor progression.
The short data on survival of patients treated with TACE are insufficient to prove
that TACE is superior to any other tested treatment. Moreover, 14 patients are a
small sample, inadequate to verify significant differences from a statistical
standpoint.
I would suggest to remove the survival data, focusing the paper on the
interventional radiology treatments of BCS and BCS with HCC. It would be of
some interest to have also a short literature review of such arguments.
Minor comments
There are somel typing erros, which must be fixed.
Level of interest: An article whose findings are important to those with closely
related research interests
Quality of written English: Needs some language corrections before being
published
Statistical review: No, the manuscript does not need to be seen by a
statistician.
Declaration of competing interests:
I declare that I have no competing interests.
Review for 10.1186/1471-230X-13-105 (2013)

Reviewer's report
Title:Hepatocellular carcinoma associated with Budd-Chiari syndrome: imaging
features and transcatheter arterial chemoembolization
Version: 3Date:15 May 2013
Reviewer: marco montorsi
Reviewer's report:
The authors reviewed the manuscript based on reviewers's suggestions. Now the
paper can be accepted for publication.
Level of interest: An article of importance in its field
Quality of written English: Acceptable
Statistical review: No, the manuscript does not need to be seen by a
statistician.
Declaration of competing interests:
No
Review for 10.1186/1471-230X-13-105 (2013)

Reviewer's report
Title:Hepatocellular carcinoma associated with Budd-Chiari syndrome: imaging
features and transcatheter arterial chemoembolization
Version: 3Date:31 May 2013
Reviewer: Aurelie Plessier
Reviewer's report:
Modifications have improved the manuscript accordingly
Level of interest: An article of importance in its field
Quality of written English: Acceptable
Statistical review: No, the manuscript does not need to be seen by a
statistician.
Declaration of competing interests:
I declare that I have no competing interests'
Review for 10.1186/1471-230X-13-104 (2013)

Reviewer's report
Title:Prevalence and risk factors of Helicobacter pylori infection in Korea;
Nationwide multicenter study over 13 years
Version: 1Date:11 March 2013
Reviewer: Manuele Furnari
Reviewer's report:
Comment to the Author:
General:
Yet another cross-sectional study, about H pylori epidemiology, in a specific
geographical area (three in a row in about 15 years by the same working group),
but this time in a larger population and with more variables taken into
consideration.
However, analysis of epidemiological data seems comprehensive and clear.
Specific:
Major revisions:
a) Patients enrollment is not completely clear.
Why did asymptomatic patients undergo H pylori testing?
It is not clear if data were collected retrospectively or prospectively.
b) Author should state if patients provided informed consent.
c) Was the questionnaire used validated?
d) How were patients belonging to the same family unit considered?
Discretionary revisions
e) It is known that different geographic areas had different H pylori prevalence:
according to previous studies, Seoul had the lowest prevalence compared to the
other regions of South Korea.
Although seroprevalence showed downward trends in most of areas (as stated in
discussion section), is it possible that change of prevalence in the overall
population might be influenced by a different proportion of subjects included from
the provinces rather than more industrialized areas, over the decades?
f) I think the manuscript might benefit if the author would discuss why serologic
test was used rather than other non-invasive test such as UBT or SAT. (i.e.
costs/adherence/PPI usage…)
g) Have the author got information about how the association between TC and
Hp serology was in the previous periods investigated?
Level of interest: An article of limited interest
Quality of written English: Acceptable
Statistical review: No, the manuscript does not need to be seen by a
statistician.
Declaration of competing interests:
I declare that I have no competing interests
Review for 10.1186/1471-230X-13-104 (2013)

Reviewer's report
Title:Prevalence and risk factors of Helicobacter pylori infection in Korea;
Nationwide multicenter study over 13 years
Version: 2Date:24 May 2013
Reviewer: Leonardo Henry H Eusebi
Reviewer's report:
The Authors have revised the article as suggested, I do not have further
comments.
The article presents new data on h.pylori's epidemiology over the last 13 years in
Korea, however it is a very specific topic, interesting exclusively for experts in the
field
Level of interest: An article of limited interest
Quality of written English: Acceptable
Statistical review: No, the manuscript does not need to be seen by a
statistician.
Declaration of competing interests:
I declare that I have no competing interests
Review for 10.1186/1471-230X-13-103 (2013)

Reviewer's report
Title:Performance of Single-Balloon Enteroscopy for the Diagnosis and
Management of Small Bowel Disorders Based on Clinical Manifestations
Version: 1Date:3 February 2013
Reviewer: Peter Green
Reviewer's report:
This is a retrospective, single center study of 145 single balloon enteroscopy
studies performed in.
There is extensive duplication of the results and the tables. The paper could be
shortened by reducing the narrative part of the results
How many patients were taking aspirin or NSAIDs?
Level of interest: An article whose findings are important to those with closely
related research interests
Quality of written English: Acceptable
Statistical review: No, the manuscript does not need to be seen by a
statistician.
Declaration of competing interests:
i declare that I have no competing interests
Review for 10.1186/1471-230X-13-103 (2013)

Reviewer's report
Title:Performance of Single-Balloon Enteroscopy for the Diagnosis and
Management of Small Bowel Disorders Based on Clinical Manifestations
Version: 2Date:7 June 2013
Reviewer: Philipp Lenz
Reviewer's report:
Dear Prof. Bhagat !
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to re-review the article for BMC
Gastroenterology.
To my opinion, after the revision the manuscript can be accepted in its present
form.
Yours sincerely.
Dr. Philipp Lenz
Comments to the Author:
My comments and questions were perfectly addressed.
Level of interest: An article of importance in its field
Quality of written English: Acceptable
Statistical review: No, the manuscript does not need to be seen by a
statistician.
Declaration of competing interests:
No conflict of interest.
Review for 10.1186/1471-230X-13-102 (2013)

Reviewer's report
Title:Acute severe peritonitis due to typhoid intestinal perforation: primary repair
vs intestinal resection, associated with laparostomy. Results of a systematic
surgical approach in northwestern Benin.
Version: 2Date:8 February 2013
Reviewer: Avdyl Krasniqi
Reviewer's report:
Dear Editor,
I would like to ask authors to make following minor essential revisions:
- Explain if there was any perforation of large bowel, and if was none, what was
the indication for colon resection in some cases. Also, clarify was it found faecal
contamination or the term was used to describe the small bowel content in the
peritoneal cavity.
- Describe how was cared laparostomy, covered with a sort of mesh or left open.
Kind regards
Avdyl Krasniqi
Level of interest: An article of importance in its field
Quality of written English: Acceptable
Statistical review: No, the manuscript does not need to be seen by a
statistician.
Declaration of competing interests:
I declare that I have no competing interests
Review for 10.1186/1471-230X-13-102 (2013)

Reviewer's report
Title:Acute severe peritonitis due to typhoid intestinal perforation: primary repair
vs intestinal resection, associated with laparostomy. Results of a systematic
surgical approach in northwestern Benin.
Version: 2Date:17 February 2013
Reviewer: Abdulrasheed Nasir
Reviewer's report:
Major compulsory revisions
1. Result : 37 patients were not included in the analysis including those lost to
follow up, those that discharge before revision time and those that died. The
number of patient in each category will need to be supplied.
2. Discussion should not be included in the result section
3. The result were not succinctly presented for example 111 patient had
laparatomy, perforation was document in 104 which should be the basis for
further analysis. But 37 had only one laparatomy because of discharge, lost to
follow up and death. Is these 37 out of the total 111 or 37 out of 104 with
perforation these will need clarification
4. the overall complication will need to be mention and relate it with surgical
technique rather than stating it with each revision making it confusing.
5. The overall mortality was not clear! More than half of patient with initial
laparatomy died ? The mortality could be determined for 84 patients! Group A
mortality was 40% and Group B was 35.5%. Absolute number will be necessary
here. The authors also stated an overall mortality of 21.2%. These are quite
confusing and need clarification.
5. There are so many tables with repetition of what was presented in results.
Table 1,2,4 were not necessary.
Minor essential revisions
1 Thorough Clinical evaluation will be adequate in most instances to detect
patient with complication.
2 The hypothesis in this study is not clear! Is it evaluating the safety of revision
laparostomy or Just comparing the two operation techniques
3 The limitation of this work need to be mentioned.
4. Late presentation was mention but duration of symptom before presentation
was not provided.
5. The title is complex and can be modified as: Comparative analysis of Primary
repair vs resection and anastomosis in management of TIP.
4. The methodology was fairly described. However, the indication for primary
repair or resection was not clearly stated in the methodology
Discreationary revision
1. The presentation of the result need to be more organized for ready to be able
to make meaning out of this.
Level of interest: An article whose findings are important to those with closely
related research interests
Quality of written English: Not suitable for publication unless extensively edited
Statistical review: Yes, and I have assessed the statistics in my report.
Declaration of competing interests:
I declare that I have no competing interests
Review for 10.1186/1471-230X-13-102 (2013)

Reviewer's report
Title:Comparative analysis of primary repair vs resection and anastomosis, with
laparostomy, in management of typhoid intestinal perforation. Results of a rural
hospital in northwestern Benin.
Version: 4Date:21 April 2013
Reviewer: Abdulrasheed Nasir
Reviewer's report:
The authors have done justification to the queries. the article is acceptable in the
present form
Level of interest: An article whose findings are important to those with closely
related research interests
Quality of written English: Acceptable
Statistical review: No, the manuscript does not need to be seen by a
statistician.
Declaration of competing interests:
I declare that I have no competing interests
Review for 10.1186/1471-230X-13-102 (2013)

Reviewer's report
Title:Comparative analysis of primary repair vs resection and anastomosis, with
laparostomy, in management of typhoid intestinal perforation. Results of a rural
hospital in northwestern Benin.
Version: 4Date:24 April 2013
Reviewer: Avdyl Krasniqi
Reviewer's report:
Dear Editor,
It is my pleasure to confirm that the authors have done all required revisions, and
in my opinion the manuscript is acceptable for publication.
Level of interest: An article of importance in its field
Quality of written English: Acceptable
Statistical review: Yes, but I do not feel adequately qualified to assess the
statistics.
Declaration of competing interests:
I declare that I have no competing interests
Review for 10.1186/1471-230X-13-101 (2013)

Reviewer's report
Title:Role of Life Events in the Presence of Colon Polyps among African
Americans
Version: 1Date:2 March 2013
Reviewer: Upender Manne
Reviewer's report:
This manuscript by Hassan et al. addresses the important issue of stressful life
events correlation with colon premalignant lesion occurrence and colorectal
cancer risk. The primary strength of this manuscript is the random nature of
patient recruitment, because since patients undergo colonoscopy for various
reasons (e.g. screening, surveillance, follow up), including all types of patients
provide the natural setting rather than including a selective set of patients. The
data is also addressing the suspected role of stress in oncogenic events. The
presented data is sound and the statistical analyses are well described and
performed. The study population of this study (African American) is major
strength due to lack of sufficient data on this race/ethnic group. The conclusions
are supported by their data.
Some of the minor concerns that needs to be addressed to improve the quality of
manuscript, they are
Minor Essential Revisions:
1) The word "life events" is stated many times in the manuscript as "life event".
Furthermore, the questionnaire also refers to "life events." Thus, this should be
changed to ‘life events’ in the entire manuscript.
2) The title in the Results section should be changed to "Participants'
characteristics." The same applies to Table 1 title: "participants'...."
3) The abbreviation H/O at the bottom of Table 1 is not a common practice, thus,
"16 has H/O polyps unclear, needs to be expanded"
Level of interest: An article of outstanding merit and interest in its field
Quality of written English: Acceptable
Statistical review: Yes, and I have assessed the statistics in my report.
Declaration of competing interests:
'I declare that I have no competing interests'
Review for 10.1186/1471-230X-13-100 (2013)

Reviewer's report
Title:Lactobacillus acidophilus CRL 1014 improved gut health in the SHIME
reactor
Version: 3Date:17 February 2013
Reviewer: Alexandra Meziti
Reviewer's report:
Major comments
Point 1. Although the authors made most of the corrections suggested, I still find
unacceptable to present results (l.28-29, p.9) such as 'the band marked ‘‘lac 3’’
revealed 81% of similarity to Lactobacillus johnsonii (GI,AB6343.1).'. My
comment at the first MS was whether this (81%) is a typing error and the answer
was that this was due to bad sequencing. It is definite that bad sequences
(e.g.chimeras, bad chromatograms) should not be further used in any molecular
analysis. Especially in 16S, as done here, they drive in biased conclusions. I
suggest that the sequencing should be done again since the authors have DNA
left from their experiments.
Point 2. I insist that all sequences obtained in this study should be submitted in
Genbank before publishing.
Point 3. I do not understand and I find inadequate the explanation the authors
provided in point 6 of the first revision
[Point 6: Why were only four bands successfully sequenced. Was there any
problem
with sequencing or you suggest it was not needed? Please clarify.
Answer 6: Our objective in this paper was showed the ecological microbial
changes,
no specified bands. According Possemiers et al (2004), when using in vitro
simulators, before influencing the microbial ecosystem, it is crucial to start from a
stable community, which is more or less representative to the in vivo human
situation. Otherwise specific shifts can’t be related to a specific in vitro treatment.
As
DGGE patterns offer a more accurate view on the species distribution and
composition in a microbial community, PCR-DGGE was applied to monitor
changes
in the in vitro microbial community composition during the start-up period of the
SHIME reactor system.]
The answer provided does not answer the question "why only four bands were
SUCCESSFULLY sequenced?". How did you select these bands?
Level of interest: An article of importance in its field
Quality of written English: Needs some language corrections before being
published
Statistical review: No, the manuscript does not need to be seen by a
statistician.
Declaration of competing interests:
I declare that I have no competing interests
Review for 10.1186/1471-230X-13-100 (2013)

Reviewer's report
Title:Lactobacillus acidophilus CRL 1014 improved gut health in the SHIME
reactor
Version: 3Date:27 February 2013
Reviewer: Susana Fuentes
Reviewer's report:
The authors have in general well responded to the comments and suggestions of
the reviewers, and have submitted a much improved manuscript. Also, thank you
for including line and page numbers!
Nevertheless, I still have a few issues that I would like to share with the authors.
General remarks:
Still at a number of places throughout the manuscript, the authors give the
impression that they assessed overall microbial community structure by DGGE.
This is not the case, as only lactobacilli were targeted. This really has to be
adjusted for p.2, l.18; p.6, l.24; p.7, l.31; p.9, l.6; p.9, l.9; p.11, l.18; but please
make sure that I didn’t miss any.
p.2, l.10-12: The description of the probiotic addition is different from the one
given in Materials and Methods. Please check.
p.2, l.14: were carried out for monitoring of the microbial community
p.3, l.15 and throughout the manuscript; species is abbreviated spp., not ssp.
p.4, l.12: Preparation of L.acidophilus CRL 1014 cells
p.4, l.18: For how long were the cells kept until use?
p.4, l.23: to resemble those found in vivo
p.4, l.26: If figure 1 is supplementary, number this one as S1, and renumber the
figures included in the main text accordingly, starting with Figure 1.
p.5, l.2: fresh fecal samples
p.5, l.5: The sentences starting from line 5 and line 8 are giving essentially the
same information
p.8, l.29: I am quite concerned regarding the counts of clostridia. Counts of more
than 12 log seem too high, even for fecal samples, let stand model content
samples which have a much lower density.
p.9, l.8: DGGE analysis was used to monitor qualitative changes in the
composition and structure of the Lactobacillus communities in the three
compartments simulating colon conditions (Fig.2)
Fig.2/3 : What exactly is the added value of having these two figures? They
basically show the same DGGE profiles, right? If Figure 2 is just to indicate the
position of the band related to the probiotic, just indicate this in what is now Fig.3
p.9, l.28: I would suggest to either repeat the sequencing, or not mention it at all.
If the sequence quality is so bad that you only get to 81%, I wouldn’t trust any
matches with reference sequences, and thus this information is really not so
meaningful.
p.10, l.13 and throughout the manuscript: As opposed to latin languages, it’s
ascending colon in english, rather than colon ascending
p.11, l.6: microbial markers for what?
p.12, l.22: This reference doesn’t have any authors that are involved in the
current manuscript?
Figure 5; I would suggest to convert the concentrations to molar concentrations
to make the values more comparable for the different fatty acids
Level of interest: An article of importance in its field
Quality of written English: Needs some language corrections before being
published
Statistical review: No, the manuscript does not need to be seen by a
statistician.
Declaration of competing interests:
no competing interest
Review for 10.1186/1471-230X-13-100 (2013)

Reviewer's report
Title:Lactobacillus acidophilus CRL 1014 improved gut health in the SHIME
reactor
Version: 4Date:29 March 2013
Reviewer: Susana Fuentes
Reviewer's report:
The authors have further improved their manuscript, and I have only a few
comments left that I would like to share with them.
Most importantly, as also pointed out by the other reviewer of the manuscript, it is
quite surprising that sequencing seems to be so problematic. It is hard to believe
that the authors don’t have access to commercial sequencing services, which are
popping up all around the world. It’s nowadays relatively cheap, e.g., to send
your samples to Korea or elsewhere, and get high quality sequences at low cost
back within several days to weeks. I don’t see the need to rely on slow and/or
costly internal facilities at the authors’ University.
p.2, l.18: Should be DGGE, not DGEE
p.4, l.23: delete “experiments”
p.5, l.20: I have pointed this out before, but there is still plenty of ssp., rather than
the correct spp. as abbreviation for species. Please check your manuscript
throughout for those errors.
p.9, l.17: what means 99 at 91%? Do you mean 99 to 91%?
p.11, l.10:Clostridium should be in italics
Level of interest: An article whose findings are important to those with closely
related research interests
Quality of written English: Acceptable
Statistical review: No, the manuscript does not need to be seen by a
statistician.
Declaration of competing interests:
'I declare that I have no competing interests'
Review for 10.1186/1471-230X-13-100 (2013)

Reviewer's report
Title:Lactobacillus acidophilus CRL 1014 improved gut health in the SHIME
reactor
Version: 4Date:2 April 2013
Reviewer: Alexandra Meziti
Reviewer's report:
Point1. The tables mentioned in the manuscript are missing from what was sent
to us. I guess they are the same tables with the previous versions but still they
need to be included again.
Point 2. P.8-l.3. How many times did you perform DGGE? You excised bands
from the lactobacilli community and you performed DGGE again? Are you sure?
Either you did something wrong, or you wrote something wrong.
Point 3. It is necessary that you present genbank numbers of your sequences in
order to have your study published.
Point 4. P.9-l.14. How do you suggest this 70%? I cannot see that from figure 1.
Point 5.p.9-l.19-28. A big change in the figure is indicated from the band you did
not manage to sequence finally. Did you sequence four or three bands after all?
You write four but you have results for three and then again four bands in figure
legend where lac 1 for L. acidophilus appears. Apart from that the legend of the
figure is not correct, since it is the same with the previous manuscript.
Point 6. At least from the molecular data, I do not think that you can conclude the
beneficial effect of L.acidophilus. You have shifts in the lactobacilli community but
it is not certain that this is driven from the addition of the strain.
Level of interest: An article whose findings are important to those with closely
related research interests
Quality of written English: Needs some language corrections before being
published
Statistical review: No, the manuscript does not need to be seen by a
statistician.
Declaration of competing interests:
I declare that I have no competing interests
Review for 10.1186/1471-230X-13-98 (2013)

Reviewer's report
Title:Cerebral microdialysis reflects the efficacy of Fractionated Plasma
Separation and Adsorption treatment of acute liver failure earlier than intracranial
pressure - a controlled study in pigs
Version: 1Date:3 April 2013
Reviewer: chuansheng wang
Reviewer's report:
Major compulsory revisions:
1. Title is misleading/unclear. I think the key finding of this paper is that
microdialysis data correlated with reduction of ICPs (which is significant compare
to reference 4 and 5 ) and potentially can be used as an early marker for
reduction of cerebral edema during the management of ALF in a pig model.
However, the title implies that FPSA is an effective therapy for acute liver failure.
2. Please clarify reference 4 and 5 in the introduction since their results are
critical for the authors work. In the discussion, the authors need to address the
different findings between their work using animal model and the other studies
using human ALF patients.
3. The introduction needs to be expanded so that it is clear to us what has been
done and what lead to your current hypothesis.
4. please elaborate on the reverse correlation between ICP and glutamine level
after 10 hours since it was not mentioned in the discussion. The impression given
is that you study is consistent with others but after 10 hours it clearly showed a
reverse correlation.
Level of interest: An article whose findings are important to those with closely
related research interests
Quality of written English: Needs some language corrections before being
published
Statistical review: No, the manuscript does not need to be seen by a
statistician.
Declaration of competing interests:
None to above
Review for 10.1186/1471-230X-13-98 (2013)

Reviewer's report
Title:Cerebral microdialysis reflects the efficacy of Fractionated Plasma
Separation and Adsorption treatment of acute liver failure earlier than intracranial
pressure - a controlled study in pigs
Version: 1Date:19 April 2013
Reviewer: Amitabh suman
Reviewer's report:
Major compulsory revisions:
The aim of the study needs to be clarified. Is it a comparoson between two ways
of monitoring namely ICP measurement and cerebral microdialysis or is it
studying whether FPSA is a useful modality of therapy. The title suggests the
former and the writing suggests the latter with some "objective" thrown in
between in introduction. The title, declared objective , the collected data and the
writing should all move towards one goal. I am totally confused after reading the
current version
A lot of unnecessary details of surgery and management are described. it is not
at all necessary if it is a well established model as claimed. Also there is
unnecessary descriptive details in the discussion which should be focussed on
the current experiment its validity and comparison to other similar studies.
A lot of details is thrown in reg statistical anslysis in methodology but there is no
evidence at all that it has been applied - not even a p value figures in the results.
The result section needs to be in accordance to the aim. In the current version
the results are thrown in without any sense of direction.
The language and articulation needs significant improvement
Level of interest: An article of limited interest
Quality of written English: Not suitable for publication unless extensively edited
Statistical review: Yes, and I have assessed the statistics in my report.
Declaration of competing interests:
I have no competing interest in relation to the paper. I also have no disclosures to
make regarding financial issues
Review for 10.1186/1471-230X-13-97 (2013)

Reviewer's report
Title:No Role for Glutathione S-Transferase Genotypes in Caucasian
Esophageal Squamous Cell or Adenocarcinoma Etiology: an European
Case-Control Study
Version: 2Date:24 April 2013
Reviewer: liam J murray
Reviewer's report:
Comment 1. This is an interesting and well written paper which builds on
previous studies that have examined the role of genetic variants of Glutathione
S-transferases (GSTs) with respect to the aetiology of esophageal cancer. Most
work in this field has examined the aetiology of squamous cell carcinoma rather
than oesophageal adenocarcinoma and has primarily been from Asian studies so
this paper is a welcome addition to the literature in the field.
Comment 2. In general, the methods used are well described and appropriate.
Inclusion of response rates for cases and controls would have been a useful
addition to enable the reader to guage how representative these groups are of
the patient and reference populations (Discretionary revision).
Comment 3. The examination of interactions between genes is interesting and
potentially informative analsysis, however it would be useful if the authors could
comment on whether this was an a priori objective and point to other examples in
the literature where similar approaches have been used. (Minor Essential
Revision)
Comment 4. The results presented are interpreted as indicating no association
between the polymorphisms examined and aetiology of cancer of either
histological type. However in general the estimates for the low activity genotypes
for squamous cell carcinoma are consistently below unity. The confidence
intervals are very wide because of low number of these cancers included in the
study. The authors should discuss more fully the lack of power of their study,
especially with respect to the findings for squamous cell carcinoma. Low power is
additionally an issue for the interaction analyses. (Minor Essential Revision)
Level of interest: An article whose findings are important to those with closely
related research interests
Quality of written English: Acceptable
Statistical review: No, the manuscript does not need to be seen by a
statistician.
Review for 10.1186/1471-230X-13-97 (2013)

Reviewer's report
Title:No Role for Glutathione S-Transferase Genotypes in Caucasian
Esophageal Squamous Cell or Adenocarcinoma Etiology: an European
Case-Control Study
Version: 2Date:30 April 2013
Reviewer: Weimin Ye
Reviewer's report:
Discretionary Revisions
The authors can consider to explain more clear the tests for gene-gene
interactions.
Results from stratified analyses by smoking status and biosample resource
(tissue vs blood) can be added in text.
Level of interest: An article whose findings are important to those with closely
related research interests
Quality of written English: Acceptable
Statistical review: No, the manuscript does not need to be seen by a
statistician.
Declaration of competing interests:
No conflict of interests
Review for 10.1186/1471-230X-13-96 (2013)

Reviewer's report
Title:The Association Between Celiac Disease and Eosinophilic Esophagitis in
Children and Adults
Version: 1Date:14 February 2013
Reviewer: Peter Green
Reviewer's report:
In this study the authors have examined the association af EoE and celiac
disease in a population based study.
Major points that need to be addressed.
The most obvious issue is that pediatric gastroenterologists routinely biopsy the
entire upper GI tract, while adult GI doctors rarely do this. The authors could
examine this and find out the percent of pediatric patients with both biopsies of
the esophagus and duodenum and compare this with the adult data.
The data is only as good as the diagnosing physicians. We have no idea from the
data how good the physicians are at diagnosing both EoE and CD. The
prevalence of both conditions (EoE and CD) in the study population needs to be
compared to other North american population derived data / study results. For
EoE the authors can compare the EoE prevalence to Olmsted County data and
for CD the authors can compare to US derived NHANES data from the recent
publication from the Mayo Clinic that demonstrated that CD occurs in ~0.7% of
the population with only 17% aware that they have CD.
Level of interest: An article of importance in its field
Quality of written English: Acceptable
Statistical review: No, the manuscript does not need to be seen by a
statistician.
Declaration of competing interests:
'I declare that I have no competing interests'
Review for 10.1186/1471-230X-13-96 (2013)

Reviewer's report
Title:The Association Between Celiac Disease and Eosinophilic Esophagitis in
Children and Adults
Version: 1Date:24 February 2013
Reviewer: Carlo Catassi
Reviewer's report:
This is an epidemiological study investigating the association between
eosinophylic esophagitis (EoE) and celiac disease (CD) in a large Canadian
population sample. The incidence of EoE ranged from 2.1 to 10.7 cases per
100,000 population. The incidence of CD ranged from 10.4 to 15.7 cases per
100,000 population. The concomitant diagnosis of both EoE and CD was made
in three patients, all of whom were pediatric males. The SIR for EoE in the CD
cohort was 48.4 with a SIR for CD within the paediatric EoE cohort of 75.05.
This is a simple epidemiological work that is clearly presented. The sample size
is large, however the relevant disease association (EoE + CD) was present only
in three cases, a finding that weakens the conclusions. Furthermore I don’t think
this study really demonstrates that CD is significantly associated with EoE, since
the prevalence of CD in patients with EoE was 3/421, i.e. the same (around 1%)
expected in the general population. These contradictory findings are likely to be
explained by a possible detection bias, in that a patient undergoing EGDS
because of suspected EoE is more likely to end up with a diagnosis of CD than a
subject who is not performing the EGDS.
Minor comments:
Page 2 line 12: The SIR of EoE in the CD cohort…(“in the” is missing)
Pages 3-4: the introduction is too long, particularly concerning the description of
EoE. There is no need to describe clinical and pathophysiological details here,
since the study did not address these issues. Likewise the number of references
on EoE should be cutted accordingly;
Page 4 line 7: change “effect” with “affect”
Page 6 line 3: the diagnostic criteria for celiac disease (CD) should be stated
more clearly, e.g. patients with a Marsh 3a-c biopsy, Marsh 3a-c biopsy or Marsh
1 plus typical serological CD pattern (e.g. anti-tTG higher than 10x normal
values, etc)
Page 8 line 13: delete “in”
Level of interest: An article of limited interest
Quality of written English: Acceptable
Statistical review: No, the manuscript does not need to be seen by a
statistician.
Declaration of competing interests:
I declare that I have no competing interests
Review for 10.1186/1471-230X-13-96 (2013)

Reviewer's report
Title:The Association Between Celiac Disease and Eosinophilic Esophagitis in
Children and Adults
Version: 1Date:18 March 2013
Reviewer: James Franciosi
Reviewer's report:
The authors present an interesting manuscript reporting a population-based
study investigating the incidence rates of Celiac Disease and EoE (really,
esophageal eosinophilia). Overall the manuscript is well written and statistically
sound. I submit the following Major Compulsory Revisions
1. In the first paragraph, the authors report that the incidence of EoE has risen
dramatically over the past decade, yet the data in table 1 do not show this to be
the case at least for the pediatric subpopulation.
2. The inclusion of both Table 1 and Figure 1 appear redudant. Figures do not
have Titles provided
3. The authors need to explore further the difference in IR in total vs pediatric
cohorts- have the adult biopsy practices changed in their adult groups that may
explain these apparent rises as ascertainment bias?
DeBrosse, C.W., Collins, M.H., Buckmeier Butz, B.K., Allen, C.L., King, E.C.,
Assa'ad, A.H., Abonia, J.P., Putnam, P.E., Rothenberg, M.E., Franciosi, JP.
Identification, epidemiology, and chronicity of pediatric esophageal eosinophilia,
1982-1999. J Allergy Clin Immunol. 2010 Jul;125 (1):112-9
4. The current EoE consensus guidelines (Liacouras, JACI, 2011) note Celiac
Disease as associated with Esophageal Eosinophilia as distinct from EoE. This
combined with the relatively unknown clinical criteria for EoE in the 3 subjects,
really suggest that these subjects are best termed as having esophageal
eosinophilia. Certainly a controversial topic, but one could argue that PPI
responsive esophageal eosinophilia has not been excluded, and Esophageal
eosinophilia in the context of duodenitis does not meet the defintions for EoE
5. Table 2 - what happened to the esophageal eosinophilia when wheat was
eliminated and the duodenitis resolved on repeat endoscopy?
6. Page 4-5 - the authors need to emphasize why there study is an important
contribution to the literature that is not present in the studies described
7. Methods - search terminology? Could the search terminology have
underestimated either Celiac or EoE cases
8. Methods - again appears to be hisologic esophageal eosinophilia vs EoE by
current criteria
9. Page 9 - given that there were only 3 subjects identified, I wonder about
contacting these patients
Level of interest: An article of importance in its field
Quality of written English: Acceptable
Statistical review: Yes, and I have assessed the statistics in my report.
Declaration of competing interests:
I do not have any competing interests that are relevant to the review of this
manuscript
Review for 10.1186/1471-230X-13-96 (2013)

Reviewer's report
Title:The Association Between Celiac Disease and Eosinophilic Esophagitis in
Children and Adults
Version: 2Date:6 May 2013
Reviewer: Peter Green
Reviewer's report:
the authors have addressed my questions
Level of interest: An article of importance in its field
Quality of written English: Acceptable
Statistical review: No, the manuscript does not need to be seen by a
statistician.
Declaration of competing interests:
i have no competing interests