Application of Probiotic Yeasts on Candida Species Associated Infection
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The review paper by Kunyeit et al. provides a broad overview on the potential of probiotics based on yeasts as new treatments against Candida, providing a new avenue with increased relevance in the context of increasing resistance to commonly used antifungals. The paper is very well written, addresses a timely issue and provides an interesting and well presented overview on what can be the potential of probiotic yeasts against Candida. The only comment that i think should require attention concerns the drug resistance mechanisms which are associated to a very outdated reference (nr 24), where many recent papers have been published concerning this matter which identified multiple players. Another issue that deserves further attention in this topic concerns the fact that many studies addressing the emergence of resistance to azoles in lab strains provide insights that until thus far, had not been confirmed to exist in clinical strains. Also another topic concerns the issue of I. occidentalis, considering the recent demonstration that I. orientalis is, in fact, C. krusei. In this context, maybe it should be discussed these issues in this paper, considering that many of these yeast species can actually be closely related with Candida species (as seen for I. orientalis).
Author Response
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Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The Authors provide a review based on scientific reports regarding the Application of probiotic yeasts on Candida species associated infection. The review is clearly written, the different parts are well organized and the topic has been discussed in a comprehensive manner, on the whole. References are also pertinent. I suggest accepting the review with minor revisions.
In particular:
Line 33: add the acronym LAB (Lactic Acid Bacteria) and insert it throughout the text;
Line 70: convert in normal text “have been frequently identified in a healthy individual’s gut”;
Figure 1: change the word “epithilia” in “epithelia”.
Author Response
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Reviewer 3 Report
First of all I would like to thank the invitation to review this manuscript. Although through the title reading the manuscript sound interesting, the truth is that the manuscript markedly lack of structure, organization, scientific soundness, objectiveness, critical evaluation, and therefore should be declined for publication. Among so many more gaps, i would like to highlight the following ones:
- through the manuscript reading, the authors just highlighted the use of saccharomyces species as effective therapeutic strategies against candida ssp.-associated infections
- candidiasis can occur in several systems, and different probiotic strains have distinct patterns of effectiveness depending on the system focused. this is not highlighted here, and the readers cannot absorb such information through the reading of this manuscript
- no research methodology was established and thus this manuscript has no clear objective defined, and as a consequence, the poor quality is the result
candida species biofilms are rarely composed of a same candida species and more difficult they often combine bacteria and fungi (mixed biofilms). several studies have been performed on such aspects but the authors did not highlight in this work such advances
- the role of probiotics on biomolecules metabolism has been also target of an extreme interest but this aspect deserves a book series, not a small subsection of this manuscript. instead of being superficial, the authors should clearly define the objective and to explore the most updated information as possible on a such aspect
Author Response
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Round 2
Reviewer 3 Report
Regarding section entitled "Role of small bioactive metabolites in probiotic action" I suggest authors to include a table/scheme illustrating the up-to-date studied biomolecules and main findings obtained.
Author Response
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