Psychobiotics as an Intervention in the Treatment of Irritable Bowel Syndrome: A Systematic Review

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

 

 

This review is very well written, concise, informative and thorough. The selection of papers was done in a rational and professional way. It addresses an increasingly important subject with relevance to IBS and beyond to other diseases, where stress and bacteria may interact as etiological factors. The authors suggest applicative therapeutic ideas and are aware of the general limitations of the studies, such as low patient numbers, limited information on actual psychobiotics therapeutic intervention.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,
Thank you for your positive feedback on our review. We are glad that our efforts in selecting the papers and writing the article were appreciated. It is very important for us to make our work understandable and useful for readers. We believe that our work will contribute to further discussion of psychobiotic therapy and its role in the treatment of various diseases.
Kind regards, Authors

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript, “Psychobiotics as an intervention in the treatment of irritable bowel syndrome. A systematic review”, studied the topic of probiotic therapy and the mental health of patients with IBS. However, the important ideas need to be analyzed and elaborated as comprehensively as possible. Therefore, this paper may need a major revision. Comments are as follows:

1.    In lines 54-59, the three questions the author posted may already be well proven. In addition, the logic of these three questions was not strong, I suggest the relationship of these three points could go deeper one by one or be parallel in different aspects.

2.    “FODMAP” needs a full name explanation. The same question also appeared many times in the article, please check others.

3.    Parts 2.1 and 2.2 may not be necessary in this paper. The background should be written in the Introduction part.

4.    The part of “Materials and Methods” may not be appropriate, I suggest the author revise it to simplify the key messages.

5.    Some Latin names in Table 1 need to revise.

6.    The key points of “3. The potential of psychobiotics in the treatment of IBS” are too simple to summarize, the details should be included in an appropriate frame and arranged logically.

 

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer, 
We would like to thank you sincerely for your careful review of our article and your valuable comments. We would like to inform you that the comments have been taken into account and highlighted in yellow in the text. The following changes have been made:
Re 1. Q1-Q3 have been changed. We hope that they are now more specific and logical.
Re 2. In the text, admittedly, there was already a sentence developing the acronym FODMAP, but a passage was added to it referring to the fact that not everyone can follow this diet, an example is people with ED, and ED is often associated with mood disorders. We think this directs the topic to psychobiotics and ties the whole thing up.
Re 3. It has been reviewed and possibly corrected.
Re 4. It seems that the methodology of the study is necessary for this type of work, we tried to correct it slightly.
Ad 5. Cosmetic oversights have been corrected and "Lactobacillus plantarum 299v" has been changed to the current nomenclature "Lactiplantibacillus plantarum 299v".
Re 6. It has been revised and possibly corrected.
Also, 4 literature items were added and the whole thing was updated with appropriate footnotes in the text, and the bibliography was corrected. Thanks again for your time and assistance.
Sincerely, Authors

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The revised manuscript has been revised according to the reviewer's comments, therefore i think the the revised manuscript can be accepted in the present form