Blastocystis sp. Infection: Prevalence and Clinical Aspects among Patients Attending to the Laboratory of Parasitology–Mycology of Fann University Hospital, Dakar, Senegal

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

 

The manuscript presents interesting data. This article is appropriate in terms of content, structure and English writing. After a review of the manuscript, I have some comments.

1-      In some parts of the text it is seen that the word Blastocystis is used alone. Given that the study was performed on Blastocystis hominis. So, it should be written in the text as Blastocystis hominis or B. hominis.

2-      The name of microorganisms should be written in italic e.g. Blastocystis hominis or B. hominis.

3-      Please use B. hominis instead of Blastocystis hominis after the first appearance in the text. It is also better to use the scientific names of parasites (Trichocephale à Trichuris trichiura).

4-      Please replase “Kyst” with “Cyst”.

5-      Please add the SD to mean age.

6- Please add the (%) after 50.9 in the Results “Socio-demographic characteristics of study participants” section.

7-      It is better to use new references (recent years).

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Blastocystis hominis infection: Prevalence and clinical aspects among patients attending to the laboratory of Parasitology-My-cology of Fann University Hospital, Dakar/Senegal

 

In this study, the Author studied the prevalence and clinical aspects of Blastocystis hominis infection. Having a total of 3264 patients in the study allows us to make a good assessment of the frequency of the infection. I found the paper to be well written and the conclusion to be well explained. Therefore, I support the publication of this work following minor revisions:

 

· English editing is needed somewhere in the manuscript (in the abstract the word "using" appears twice).

·      A detailed analysis of the age group and gender combined with the symptomatic or asymptomatic carriers would be possible if the author added the gender to the age group.

·      The author should consider adding more introductions that they added in the discussion. (Example data from Niang et al, El Safadi et al, Thaddeus et al.)

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear Authors,

This is a straightforward study reporting the retrospective laboratory findings in a hospital Dakar/Senegal and analyses descriptive findings. It gives valuable data on the prevalence of Blastocystis in the region. However, the presentation of the work is little evasive in general.  I offered some minor corrections in the manuscript.

Please add figure/s including Blastocystis positive samples.

Please define how you calculated incidence in abstract? Please check the use of incidence through the manuscript.

Please use “di-parasitism” instead of “bi-parasitism”

Correct the following “B. hominis + Kyste Endolimax” “Trophozoïte” write in English.

Please use more current literature in the manuscript.  

All Blastocystis should be written in italics.

Sometimes you have used “Blastocystis”, sometimes “Blastocystis hominis”, please use the same nomenclature in the manuscript.  

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf