Associations of Bedtime Schedules in Childhood with Obesity Risk in Adolescence

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors,

Thank you for your manuscript. The study is very well-designed and provides longitudinal data testing the risk of obesity in children according to a bedtime schedule. The topic is important and relevant to the current situation of increasing overweight and obesity in children. The paper is very well-written and easy to read. The results are well presented and discussed.

I have only a few minor comments for the authors' consideration.

In the Introduction section, it would be helpful to provide the current prevalence and trends of overweight and obesity in children in the UK.

In section 3.1, it would be interesting to see the prevalence of underweight in children cohort at the baseline.

In section 2.2, it is stated that the models were adjusted for baseline overweight status. I wonder if the authors calculated the incidence of obesity in the overweight group at the baseline separately?

Ar data on diet available in your study?

Also, I think Table 1 would be more clear, providing p-values of comparison with the reference group.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

A sincere thank you for the very helpful and insightful comments on our manuscript. We were grateful to receive such considered, expert reviews of the manuscript which we have considered, with each comment addressed individually below. We have made necessary changes as requested by the reviewers. 

Please see attached our response to your comments. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Manuscript ID: 1758051

 

Title: "Associations of bedtime schedules in childhood with obesity risk in adolescence"

 

 

The aim of this work was to analyse the possible relationship between sleep schedule and obesity risk. This is a longitudinal study which collected data in seven years old participants (and their parents) and collected data in the same sample after four and seven years. To this aim, more than 12.000 participants were enrolled. Overall, results seem to suggest that late and irregular bedtime increase the obesity risk two and three times, respectively.

 

 

The manuscript is interesting and correct from a methodological point of view.

 

Probably in the discussion section a comment on sleep measure could be added. I think that future research should objectively monitor sleep, for example using actigraphy.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

A sincere thank you for the very helpful and insightful comments on our manuscript. We were grateful to receive such considered, expert reviews of the manuscript which we have considered, with each comment addressed individually below. We have made necessary changes as requested by the reviewers. 

Please see attached our response to your comments. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf