Microbiota Alterations in Patients with Mucous Membrane Pemphigoid and Pemphigus Vulgaris: A Systematic Review
, Antonio Romano 1, Maria Cristina Morcaldi 1, Fausto Fiori 1 and Federica Di Spirito 2Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This study aimed to investigate the role that the oral microbiota may play in the development and evolution of pemphigus vulgaris and mucosal pemphigoid. The human microbiome plays a critical role in the pathogenesis and manifestation of oral autoimmune diseases and probiotics/prebiotics may represent new and promising therapeutic approaches.
This is a good manuscript on technically correct and sums up interesting results.
I suggest some minor revisions.
The conclusions can be improved with more details and explanations of the results obtained.
Figure 1 and table 1 need to be improved to respect the requirements of the journal. Also, I would like to see the information more synthesized, to be easier to read and understand for the readers.
Reference no. 4 on 30 lines (lines 352-380) described needs to be checked, I think there is a problem.
Author Response
-The conclusions can be improved with more details and explanations of the results obtained.
We thank the reviewer for the nice suggestion. We improved our conclusion section.
-Figure 1 and table 1 need to be improved to respect the requirements of the journal. Also, I would like to see the information more synthesized, to be easier to read and understand for the readers.
As kindly suggested by the reviewer we added the details required from the journal and added the footnotes to the tables to make the informations easier to understand.
-Reference no. 4 on 30 lines (lines 352-380) described needs to be checked, I think there is a problem.
According to the suggestion that the reviewer gave us and according to the MDPI editorial guidelines we improved our reference number four including only the first 10 authors of the manuscript.
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear Authors,
I appreciate the efforts in carrying out the present research. However, I have a few comments that I would like the authors to address.
1. For better understanding, I suggest authors to submit the checklist of PRISMA.
2. This being a "Systematic Review", why authors have considered studies of various study designs? Authors should consider the most suitable study design to answer the research question and later choose only such studies.
3. The title of the study should also clarify the "study design" considered in the systematic review.
4. Authors have missed adding the other tables and figures. I feel they are not added even in the supplementary materials.
5. PRISMA flowchart mention "6" studies are included, however, in the result section it is mentioned "4" studies were included. Kindly mention the reason for excluding the 2 studies.
6. Name of the bacteria should be mentioned in "italics"- species.
7. Add abbreviations in the footnote of table 1.
8. Add traffic light figure for ROB
9. I suggest adding more details in table 1.
10. Abstract does not give a description of the methodology. Add details.
11. Rephrase the "research question".
12. Introduction is too lengthy.
Best Wishes
Author Response
1. For better understanding, I suggest authors to submit the checklist of PRISMA.
We thank the reviewer for the fundamental hint. We uploaded the PRISMA checklist.
2. This being a "Systematic Review", why authors have considered studies of various study designs? Authors should consider the most suitable study design to answer the research question and later choose only such studies.
We thank the reviewer for the important suggestion. In our study we considered several study design because of the lack of literature regarding this interesting topic. Thus we decided to widen our search and inclusion criteria.
3. The title of the study should also clarify the "study design" considered in the systematic review.
As already mentioned in the request #2 we could not clarify the “study design” considered in our systematic review because of the enlargement in search and inclusion criteria.
4. Authors have missed adding the other tables and figures. I feel they are not added even in the supplementary materials.
As kindly suggested by the reviewers we added the missing tables and corrected some typing errors.
5. PRISMA flowchart mention "6" studies are included, however, in the result section it is mentioned "4" studies were included. Kindly mention the reason for excluding the 2 studies.
We thank the reviewer for the correction. We corrected the PRISMA flowchart deleting the typo.
6. Name of the bacteria should be mentioned in "italics"- species.
As suggested by the reviewer we added the italics when referring to bacteria.
7. Add abbreviations in the footnote of table 1.
We added the abbreviations on the footnote as the reviewer requested.
8. Add traffic light figure for ROB
As kindly suggested by the reviewer we added the light figure for the Risk Of Bias assessment.
9. I suggest adding more details in table 1.
As already suggested by the reviewer #1 we added the footnotes and tried to clarify the informations we gave the reader.
10. Abstract does not give a description of the methodology. Add details.
Thank you for your interesting point of view. We added the methodology in the abstract section.
11. Rephrase the "research question".
We added the research question highlighted in the manuscript.
12. Introduction is too lengthy.
We thank the reviewer for the interesting suggestion. Our introduction was edited also following the journal’s editorial criteria that suggested the main text for systematic review to be at least 4000 words. We tried to improve the introduction cutting several sentences.
