Title: Comparison of self-collected versus clinician collected cervicovaginal specimens for
detection of high risk human papillomavirus among HIV infected women in Ethiopia
Version: 3 Date: 07 Jun 2022
Reviewer's report:
Comments to the Editor
The present research paper entitled “Comparison of self-collected versus clinician collected
cervicovaginal specimens for detection of high-risk human papillomavirus among HIV infected
women in Ethiopia” aimed to compare the performance of self-collected vaginal specimens
versus clinician collected cervical specimens among HIV positive women in Ethiopia.
Major revisions:
General comments:
- I strongly recommend a careful revision of the text by a native English speaker, to improve
the quality standard of the text. The text is a bit confusing; the sentences should be clearer, and
some paragraphs/sentences are not connected. Furthermore, there are some verbs in the present
tense when they should be in the past tense. Moreover, some English grammar errors and details
in this manuscript should be revised carefully by native English speakers. The text of the images
should be corrected there are a lot of errors.
- Acronyms/Abbreviations should be defined the first time they appear in each of three sections:
the abstract; the main text; the first figure or table. When defined for the first time, the acronym/
abbreviation/initialism should be added in parentheses after the written-out form.
- All manuscript shall be carefully revised, in order to improve the results presentation.
1- Abstract
Background: “WHO 2030 elimination program”- Does it mean WHO 2030 cervical cancer
elimination program? Please rephrase/revise.
Methods: “The result was printed and entered into Excel spreadsheet and analyzed using SPSS
version 25.” Please rephrase/revise.
Conclusion: “we recommend the Ministry of Health”. Please specify which Ministry of Health.
2- Introduction
The authors should specify what elimination program is intended to be described, the global
strategy to eliminate cervical cancer.
Please avoid interrogative sentences.
Line 79. The acceptability of self-sampling has been characterized in several reports. Please
provide some data on the acceptability of self-sampling.
Some references (examples, among others) can be used: DOI: 10.1071/SH16077. DOI: 10.1089/
jwh.2019.8258. DOI: 10.1016/j.canep.2009.10.013.
3- Study Design
Inclusion/ exclusion criteria are missing.
Characterization of the population, namely median/mean age of participants, the age range, etc.
should be presented as an introductory table, or even as a paragraph with the information on the
characterization of the population.
4- Study setting and Period
The authors should consider a Flow diagram of study recruitment, specimen collection,
laboratory testing, and test results.
5- Study setting and Period
Please provide the information on the country. For example: AmpliTaq Gold enzyme (Roche
Molecular Systems Inc., Branchburg, NJ, USA),
6- Quality Assurance
Please rephrase/ revise“The data collectors were well experienced and some of them have the
training of trainers course on cervical cancer screening and treatment.”
7- Data entry, processing, and analysis
The collected data were entered into Excel spreadsheet, cleaned and exported to SPSS version
25 for analysis. What do the author mean with “cleaned”? Please revise.
8- Results
Line 166: “non-HPV16&18” - Please consider HPV16 and 18 or HPV16 and HPV18. Please
standardize throughout the manuscript.
Table 1- Some additional information on the Tables caption is not necessary. Example: “Table 1.
Type and distribution of high-risk HPV in both self-collected and clinician collected specimens
in Ethiopia.”.
Please rephrase/revise all table captions.
Please consider N instead of Freq.
Line 175: “In general, other high-risk HPV types were highly detected in this cervicovaginal
specimen that seek for further molecular characterization and genotyping of HPV to split out
the commonest oncogenic types in our country which play a pivotal role in vaccine design in
the future. “ Non-formal writing. Please revise.
Line 266: “We also tried to prove the timing of specimen collection indicated in the training
material, that recommend not to collect specimens when the clients had sexual contact within
24 hours.” Please check the English writing. The word “Clients” is not proper in formal English
writing. Please consider: Study participants, or similar.
9- Discussion
Line 295: “and 18 are predominant [37], that concord our recent finding indicating the high
burden of other”. The word “concord”. Non-formal writing. Please revise. Please consider:
corroborate, or similar.