JerMa88/BMC_Womens_Health_Peer_Reviews huggingface dataset:
Reviewer's report
Title:Hormone replacement therapy use and plasma levels of sex hormones in
the Norwegian Women and Cancer Postgenome Cohort - a cross-sectional
analysis
Version: 2Date:1 November 2007
Reviewer: Henrik Toft Sorensen
Reviewer's report:
The authors have satisfied the concerns raised and responded appropriately,
which has substantially improved the paper. However, the English in the text
needs to be proof-read preferably by a native-English speaking proof-reader.
There remain spelling and grammar mistakes throughout, which may or may not
be picked up by the journal editorial staff.
A few examples:
· Page 3: BMI have # BMI has.
· Page 4, second sentence: The first part of the sentence is written in the past
sense, but the second part in the present sense.
· Page 5, first line: Validation of the variables used is essential to assess
reliability. Validity and reliability are two different concepts.
· Page 6, in the middle, regarding percentage of figures: The number of decimals
differs. In the same sentence you will see 3.2% and 7%. There are other
examples in the paper.
· Page 11: In the first paragraph association are reported with p-values. In the
third paragraph with confidence intervals.
· Page 12, second paragraph: There was no statistically significant difference #
There were no statistically significant differences.
· Page 12, last paragraph: The first sentence is in the past tense, the second
sentence in the present. It should be “The sensitivity was higher ….
· Page 13, first paragraph: “Hence, they are probably # Hence, they were
probably.
There are other examples.
As mentioned in the previous review, 95% confidence intervals should be
inserted in the abstract for the specificity and sensitivity measurements.
On page 10, in the paragraph “hormone levels according to HRT-use among
postmenopausal women”, the authors continuously refer to Table 2, Fig 2. I
believe this should be Figure 3. Please correct.
On page 12, under the “Premenopausal women” section, the authors refer to
Figure 3, when in fact, this should be Figure 4. This needs to be corrected.
The discussion could be shortened without loss of information. In the discussion
there is a lot of overlap with the results section. In general, results should not be
mentioned in the discussion.
A few examples:
· Page 15, third paragraph: We found no difference in BMI between HRT-users
and nonusers.
· Page 17, second paragraph: “Our definition of menopausal studies based ….
showed lower sensitivity than based on the 2-page questionnaire”. At the same
page “We found a low misclassification rate (5%).
· Page 18, first paragraph: “Three out of the 66 users showed signs of
non-compliance…..”
· On page 19 there is a bit of information that belongs in the material and method
section: “The blood samples were sent by mail and generally received by the
NOWAC biobank staff after 1-2 days (91.5%).
Reviewer's report
Title:Characterization and factors affecting body weight and composition
changes during the sophomore year of college
Version: 1Date:11 September 2007
Reviewer: Randall Gretebeck
Reviewer's report:
General
The purpose if this investigation was to investigate changes in body weight and
composition and factors (housing status) influencing those changes among
sophomore females. The use of DEXA in this investigation adds a high level of
credibility to the results.
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Major Compulsory Revisions (that the author must respond to before a decision
on publication can be reached)
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Minor Essential Revisions (such as missing labels on figures, or the wrong use of
a term, which the author can be trusted to correct)
Title: Use of the word “factors” in the title appears to convey more than what the
manuscript provides. Typical factors that affect body weight such as diet,
physical activity, etc. are not addressed in the article. Rather, the only “factor”
that is addressed is housing status. A more appropriate title would simply be
“Characterization of body weight and composition changes during the sophomore
year of college”, or some other wording that does not imply that typical factors
associated with weight change were included in the study.
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Discretionary Revisions (which the author can choose to ignore)
It would be interesting to add a small section to the discussion addressing
changes (or lack thereof) between spring of freshman year and fall of sophomore
year. It is likely that the majority of subjects, especially those living in dorms
would return to their homes, in other words, the same environment they came
from when they started as freshman. It would be reasonable to speculate that
their weight and/or body composition would return toward baseline. Why did this
not occur? An answer is not required, but it is an interesting point of speculation.
Figure 1: While not essential based on the primary aim of the study, it would be
nice if the figure separated subjects living on and off campus (two lines) and also
show which changes were significant. However, a repeated measures ANOVA
would probably be the best analysis in this instance.
What next?: Accept after minor essential revisions
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
Reviewer's report
Title:Characterization and factors affecting body weight and composition
changes during the sophomore year of college
Version: 1Date:12 September 2007
Reviewer: Daniel Hoffman
Reviewer's report:
General
This paper addresses a fundamental issue related to obesity in the US, when
and how do changes in body weight occur. Very few studies have been able to
study weight changes longitudinally and this group has done so very well.
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Major Compulsory Revisions (that the author must respond to before a decision
on publication can be reached)
No major revisions are expected for this manuscript.
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Minor Essential Revisions (such as missing labels on figures, or the wrong use of
a term, which the author can be trusted to correct)
RESULTS: The first paragraph of the results includes information that should be
included in the methodology or statistics section.
DISCUSSION: Overall, the discussion is well written, but there are few minor
issues to be addressed.
First, there is no need to include specific results in the discussion section as
found on Page 8, end of Para 1.
Second, Para 2 on Page 9 is confusing and should be more focused and Para 3
essentially repeats results that have already been presented, although the
second half of this paragraph is highly relevant and informative.
CONCLUSIONS: As a 2 by 2 table was not presented and relative risks were not
calculated, it is not possible for the authors to conlude anything about likelihood
as to why some students gained or lost weight. The conclusions should be
limited to those than can be supported by the data presented.
TABLES: The footnotes for significance do not need to describe the direction of
significance, simply "statistically significant difference at p < 0.05"
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Discretionary Revisions (which the author can choose to ignore)
What next?: Accept after minor essential revisions
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
Reviewer's report 
 Risk factors for domestic physical violence: national cross-sectional household surveys in eight Title: 
southern African countries 
 2  28 April 2007 Version: Date: 
 Gene Feder Reviewer: 
Reviewer's report: 
General 
The authors have addressed all my comments on their original submission, up to a point, but there are a couple of outstanding issue. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
Major Compulsory Revisions (that the author must respond to before a decision on publication can be 
reached) 
1. There are insufficient caveats about the apparent comparability of incidence of partner violence by 
gender. This is not a surprising result - for example, the British Crime Survey and the US National Violence 
Against Women Survey also did not find substantial differences in the proportion of men and women who 
reported IPV. What they did find (and what this study was unable to measure) were large differences in the 
experience of sexual violence and in the severity and frequency of violence between men and women). I 
think the authors need to present their finding of comparable proportions much more cautiously given their 
single question method of measuring IPV. 
2. I think the authors have misunderstood my point about a possible relationship between economic 
inequalities and rates of IPV. I did not mean intra-household inequality, although this is also an important hypothesis. What Richard Wilkinson and others have focused on is economic inequality within countries, 
which they found is related to many social phenomena, including IPV. I suggested that the authors explore 
the variation between countries by a measure of inequality - such as the Gini coefficent - this may be more 
important than absolute poverty or wealth of a country. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Minor Essential Revisions (such as missing labels on figures, or the wrong use of a term, which the author 
can be trusted to correct) 
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Discretionary Revisions (which the author can choose to ignore) 
 Unable to decide on acceptance or rejection until the authors have responded to the major What next?: 
compulsory revisions 
 An article of importance in its field Level of interest: 
 Acceptable Quality of written English: 
 No, the manuscript does not need to be seen by a statistician. Statistical review: 
Declaration of competing interests: 
I declare that I have no competing interests
Reviewer's report 
 Risk factors for domestic physical violence: national cross-sectional household surveys in eight Title: 
southern African countries 
 2  18 May 2007 Version: Date: 
 Pat O'Campo Reviewer: 
Reviewer's report: 
Risk factors for domestic physical violence: national cross-sectional 
household surveys in eight southern African countries 
This is a resubmission of a manuscript that where the authors were 
asked to revise and resubmit. The authors have done a good job of 
addressing each of the issues raised by the reviewers. Consequently, the manuscript is much improved. The previous version had many areas that 
were unclear. In the current version, those issues have been fully 
addressed. The paper is now ready for publication.
Reviewer's report 
 Predisposing factors for bacterial vaginosis, treatment efficacy and pregnancy outcome among term Title: 
deliveries; results from a preterm delivery study. 
 1  14 April 2007 Version: Date: 
 Austin Ugwumadu Reviewer: 
Reviewer's report: 
General 
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Major Compulsory Revisions (that the author must respond to before a decision on publication can be 
reached) 
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Minor Essential Revisions (such as missing labels on figures, or the wrong use of a term, which the author 
can be trusted to correct) 
My apologies for forgetting to include my comments on Figure 1 of this manuscript about 4 hours ago. In the 
text and legend, the authors interpreted the their findings as suggesting that BV decreased with age in 
women except for smokers. A careful examination of the bars in the chart shows that a "U-shaped curve" 
could be derived for the frequency trend in all categories of women, all, smokers and non-smokers. The 
possible explanations to these trends need to be explored and discussed. The initial interpretation is 
inaccurate and should be revised in the text. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
Discretionary Revisions (which the author can choose to ignore) 
 Accept after minor essential revisions What next?: 
 An article whose findings are important to those with closely related research interests Level of interest: 
 Needs some language corrections before being published Quality of written English: 
 Yes, but I do not feel adequately qualified to assess the statistics. Statistical review:
Reviewer's report 
 Predisposing factors for bacterial vaginosis, treatment efficacy and pregnancy outcome among term Title: 
deliveries; results from a preterm delivery study. 
 1  25 May 2007 Version: Date: 
 John M. Thorp Jr. Reviewer: 
Reviewer's report: 
This is an important topic exploring interactions between bacterial vaginosis and other traditional risk factors 
as part of the secondary analysis of a large treatment trial that has been previously published. They use 
state-of-the-art technology to access vaginal microflora, while they depend on self- and clinician report from 
a registry to evaluate other exposures. That point is the major limitation of their paper. The authors fail to 
describe how these other exposures were defined and it is a concern that measuring BV precisely and other 
conditions imprecisely could lead to spurious associations. In addition, they claim that the additional 
exposures, such as smoking, can be used as risk factors to allow focused screening for BV. They do so 
without calculating the traditional measures a clinician would use for screening tests such as sensitivity, 
specificity, etc. 
Thus, I would favor publication if a major revision could address these two important points—defining exposures other than BV and presenting the predictive values of those exposures to predict BV status. 
 Unable to decide on acceptance or rejection until the authors have responded to the major What next?: 
compulsory revisions 
 An article whose findings are important to those with closely related research interests Level of interest: 
 Acceptable Quality of written English: 
 No, the manuscript does not need to be seen by a statistician. Statistical review: 
Declaration of competing interests: 
I have no competing interests
Reviewer's report
Title:Predisposing factors for bacterial vaginosis, treatment efficacy and
pregnancy outcome among term deliveries; results from a preterm delivery study.
Version: 4Date:29 July 2007
Reviewer: John M. Thorp Jr.
Reviewer's report:
General-none
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Major Compulsory Revisions (that the author must respond to before a decision
on publication can be reached)
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Minor Essential Revisions (such as missing labels on figures, or the wrong use of
a term, which the author can be trusted to correct)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Discretionary Revisions (which the author can choose to ignore)
What next?: Accept without revision
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
Reviewer's report
Title:Predisposing factors for bacterial vaginosis, treatment efficacy and
pregnancy outcome among term deliveries; results from a preterm delivery study.
Version: 4Date:4 August 2007
Reviewer: Ida Vogel
Reviewer's report:
General
-The authors have carefully revised the article and the paper is acceptable as it is
from my part.------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Major Compulsory Revisions (that the author must respond to before a decision
on publication can be reached)
none
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Minor Essential Revisions (such as missing labels on figures, or the wrong use of
a term, which the author can be trusted to correct)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Discretionary Revisions (which the author can choose to ignore)
What next?: Accept without revision
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
Reviewer's report
Title:Predisposing factors for bacterial vaginosis, treatment efficacy and
pregnancy outcome among term deliveries; results from a preterm delivery study.
Version: 4Date:16 August 2007
Reviewer: Austin Ugwumadu
Reviewer's report:
General
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Major Compulsory Revisions (that the author must respond to before a decision
on publication can be reached)
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Minor Essential Revisions (such as missing labels on figures, or the wrong use of
a term, which the author can be trusted to correct)
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Discretionary Revisions (which the author can choose to ignore)
Reviewer's report 
 Change of Menopausal Hormone Therapy Use among Women in Germany between 1998 and 2003 Title: 
 1  30 May 2007 Version: Date: 
 Nicoletta Biglia Reviewer: 
Reviewer's report: 
General 
A very interesting paper, with a good and complete analysis of all the more recent surveys on this subject 
and a critical interpretation of the collected data. 
In my opinion, the paper may be accepted without any revision. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
Major Compulsory Revisions (that the author must respond to before a decision on publication can be 
reached) 
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Minor Essential Revisions (such as missing labels on figures, or the wrong use of a term, which the author 
can be trusted to correct) 
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Discretionary Revisions (which the author can choose to ignore) 
 Accept without revision What next?: 
 An article of importance in its field Level of interest: 
 Acceptable Quality of written English: 
 No, the manuscript does not need to be seen by a statistician. Statistical review: 
Declaration of competing interests: 
I declare that I have no competing interests'below
Reviewer's report
Title:Change of Menopausal Hormone Therapy Use among Women in Germany
between 1998 and 2003
Version: 3Date:6 August 2007
Reviewer: Randall S Stafford
Reviewer's report:
General
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Major Compulsory Revisions (that the author must respond to before a decision
on publication can be reached) None.
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Minor Essential Revisions (such as missing labels on figures, or the wrong use of
a term, which the author can be trusted to correct) None.
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Discretionary Revisions (which the author can choose to ignore)
The article has been greatly improved. In particular, the manuscript is more
cohesive, easier to read, and has a more straight-forward interpretation of the
findings. There are a few sections and sentences which could be condensed and
more carefully edited, but overall the article is well constructed.
What next?: Accept after discretionary revisions
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.
Reviewer's report
Title:Differences in Menopausal Hormone Therapy Use among Women in
Germany between 1998 and 2003
Version: 5Date:15 September 2007
Reviewer: Bruce Ettinger
Reviewer's report:
General
OK
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Major Compulsory Revisions (that the author must respond to before a decision
on publication can be reached)
None
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Minor Essential Revisions (such as missing labels on figures, or the wrong use of
a term, which the author can be trusted to correct)
None
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Discretionary Revisions (which the author can choose to ignore)
What next?: Accept without 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.
Declaration of competing interests:
Consulting fees from many pharmaceutical companies that make drugs for
postmenopausal women.
Reviewer's report 
 Seasonal variation in the incidence of preeclampsia and eclampsia in tropical climatic conditions. Title: 
 1  7 June 2007 Version: Date: 
 Per Magnus Reviewer: 
Reviewer's report: 
General 
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Major Compulsory Revisions (that the author must respond to before a decision on publication can be reached) 
The authors should discuss the possible systematic selection bias that may result from referral to a tertiary 
center. Are women with preeclampsia referred from other hospitals? Is it possible that the proportion of 
women with preeclampsia who are referred differ by season? 
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Minor Essential Revisions (such as missing labels on figures, or the wrong use of a term, which the author can be trusted to correct) 
The author has made an error in caculating the prevalence of preeclamsia in the monsoon season. It 
should be 4.5 % instead of 4.3 % if the numbers in table 1 are correct. Please consider using an a priori hypothesis (leading to a one-sided statistical test). It would be helpful to calculate odds ratios with 
confidence intervals. 
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Discretionary Revisions (which the author can choose to ignore) 
 Unable to decide on acceptance or rejection until the authors have responded to the major What next?: 
compulsory revisions 
 An article whose findings are important to those with closely related research interests Level of interest: 
 Acceptable Quality of written English: 
 No, the manuscript does not need to be seen by a statistician. Statistical review: 
Declaration of competing interests: 
I declare that I have no competing interests