Analysis of Intestinal Bacterial Microbiota in Individuals with and without Chronic Low Back Pain
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for Authors1. Please add more context about microbiota and low back pain in introduction. Why would there be a context? Your discussion mentions "Significant differences were found in the metrics of alpha and beta intestinal bacterial diversity between the groups, which reinforces previous pre-clinical and clinical studies regarding the importance of the gut-lumbar spine axis." Mention these pre-clinical and clinical studies in introduction. Also, add these references in discussion.
2. Correct annotations for decimal point and keep them uniform. Example: Table 3, table 4 shows decimal point values using a "," (comma). Keep consistent with "."
3. Subheadings are also not uniform. 3.22 is 3.2.2
4. Figure 4 title is in Portuguese?
5. Delete this part:
"Conclusions This section is not mandatory but can be added to the manuscript if the discussion is unusually long or complex."
There are several typo, language, and typesetting errors that need to be corrected before accepting.
Please read through the manuscript and correct all errors
Author Response
Dear Reviewer 1, absolutely all of your observations were relevant and very valuable for improving the manuscript.
Without them, all the research work would not have been fully explained.
All suggestions and indications for corrections and/or additions were made and are reflected in the version sent on June 24, 2024.
yours sincerely,
AM Tieppo
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsABSTRACT
the acronym for the groups should be better identified. The letter LG and CG are not clear.
INTRODUCTION
Row 32, write chronicity (not chronification)
Row 50. Write was assessed (not should be assessed)
Materials and Methods
In Table 1 there is a Portuguese word.
In Table 4, there is a Portuguese word.
Results
Rows 203-204: it is not clear the relation between ‘nine species found??? And the ‘6 of them’ that resulted associated with other diseases as in Table 6 all the species listed seems to be associated to a disease.
Rows 210 to 212 the sentence has been already reported earlier
DISCUSSION
The first paragraph is a synthesis of the methods.
The other paragraphs are often unclear. The authors should rewrite them to make the reader able to understand the meaning of their statements.
The authors repeatedly highlight the need for further investigation. However, they should be able to extract meaningful information from their work to make it interesting and worthy of publication.
Comments on the Quality of English LanguageMany paragraphs are difficult to read both because the meaning is not clear but also because the use of the English language is incorrect.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer 2, absolutely all of your observations were relevant and very valuable for improving the manuscript.
Without them, all the research work would not have been fully explained.
All suggestions and indications for corrections and/or additions were made and are reflected in the version sent on June 24, 2024.
yours sincerely,
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe text has been improved.
The authors did not change the acronyms (LC and CG) although they are not adequate. Eventually, the acronyms could be PG (pain group) and CG (control group) besides, along the text the two letters of the acronyms were sometimes inverted.
Comments on the Quality of English LanguageReading and text comprehension improved.
Author Response
Dear reviewer, thank you for your extraordinary ability to detect flaws and point out possibilities for improvements.
According to your suggestions:
- The English language was edited by an MPDI expert
- In results, the title of table 5 was not clear, so I tried to improve
- Regarding acronyms, you are correct, PG (pain group) is more suitable. I got them all right in the manuscript.
Thank you very much!!!!
Yours sincerely,
AM Tieppo
