Reviewer’s report
Title: 
Predictors of adequate physical activity within a multiethnic polycystic
ovary syndrome patient population: a cross-sectional assessment
Version: 
0 
Date: 
31 Oct 2020
Reviewer: 
Joseph Abi Jaoude
Reviewer's report:
Thank you for the opportunity to review this manuscript, I have no COI to
disclose. 
The authors present an interesting cross-sectional study of patients with PCOS
regarding their exercises behavior, and highlight differences in exercise patterns
between varying ethnic populations. The main limitation of this study is the large
differences in the number of patients in the different ethnic groups, which
definitely presents some bias in the results. The study is well written, and would
be interesting to the readers of BMC Women's health. 
Some suggestions: 
Please define APA in the abstract. 
"In 2008, the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) published
updated guidelines for physical activity intended for adult Americans." Please
add the reference to the guidelines after this sentence as well.
"A prior cross-sectional assessment of 326 women with PCOS found that only
182 (56%) of the cohort met the threshold for adequate physical activity based
on the DHHS guidelines12. Further, 
non-White ethnicity was associated with a
higher risk of inadequate physical exercise in patients 
with PCOS" The authors
could consider removing this from the introduction and just mentioning those
points in the discussion instead. 
"To our  knowledge, there are no studies describing differences in physical
activity by racial/ethnic background in women with PCOS." Same comment
here… a shorter introduction is always nice. 
Really good methods section. Everything is detailed accordingly. Could the
authors mention anything on sample size calculation? 
"A total of four hundred and sixty-five patients" would write 465 since this is not
at the beginning of the sentence.
"The Kruskal-Wallis test was used to analyze METs from moderate-intensity
exercise, vigorous- intensity exercise, and total (moderate plus vigorous-
intensity) exercise across ethnic groups" no need to mention this in the results…
the methods section would suffice. 
The authors adjust for age, and then for age and BMI. Any reason for that? Why
not just present the data adjusted for both variables? 
Interesting discussion and adequate limitation section. Would shorten the
conclusion section a bit… no need to rephrase a lot of those findings. 

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