Xerostomia: From Pharmacological Treatments to Traditional Medicine—An Overview on the Possible Clinical Management and Prevention Using Systemic Approaches

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The review manuscript entitled “Xerostomia: from pharmacological treatments to Traditional Medicine. An overview on the possible clinical management and prevention using systemic approaches.” The manuscript contributed by Sardellitti et al. provided a global overview of xerostomia and possible drugs and treatment candidates for xerostomia. As we know, xerostomia currently does not have a standard treatment procedure, and this review will provide useful information for broad audiences to current understanding of xerostomia.

The review manuscript still has some minor problems that need to fix and make the manuscript can be accepted by current oncology.

 

In the introduction, the authors have described a lot of discomfortable in the oral cavity. Unfortunately, they don’t remind the impact of teeth decay and periodontal disease in xerostomia which can get more attention for the dentist or oral hygienist.

 

The first-time abbreviation should provide the full name, such as ROS and MRs.

 

Although the authors used Cochrane database to examine the real-world evidence for some drug candidates, however, they can still provide more precise words for low-quality evidence, like expert opinions in the cytoprotective agents’ section.

 

The authors also highlight the blank section about Funding, IRB statements: and etc., with blank empty. Please correct them.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thanks a lot for your kind consideration and useful suggestions on our work.

Regarding the oral complications of xerostomia, we have included caries and gingivitis due to the altered and reduced saliva flow. You can find this in the lines 112-114. However, we will increase the point if you will required it. Thank you. Furthermore, we provided more precise words for low-quality evidence, as suggested.

Regarding the acronyms, we provided a full name before the abbreviations. Thank you for the suggestions.

We filled the Funding and other parts at the end of the MDPI form.

 Thank you so much. 

Reviewer 2 Report

This is an exhaustive review on the subject of possible therapies preventing xerostomia during head and neck cancer treatment.

There are some aspects that require your attention:

The summary of the manuscript seems redundant, you have the abstract and all the info from the summary are in the manuscript body so you should not repeat them and better remove it.

In the table you use in the results column the phrase: Any significant differences between the groups were reported. This is redundant, is either No difference reported of you detaliate the differences reported.

At the end of the manuscript you either remove the funding and ethics sections ore you complete them according to MDPI instructions.

Pay attention to the references and format them according to MDPI standard.

Hope to see some future studies using some of the therapeutic principles described in this review.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for your comments and suggestions.

We have shortened the abstract as you required.

Further, the table has been corrected following your suggestions. Thanks a lot.

The funding and ethics sections have been completed and the references list has been formatted.

Sorry for these misunderstanding.

We thank again for your support and we really hope to produce new studies about the argument.

Best wishes.

 

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear authors,

the paper is well written and all the references seem to be adequate despite it could be insidious to navigate in the field of traditional medicine. 

As expected, your overview did not identify any possible remedy in the prevention and treatment of xerostomia, which remains a troublesome issue in the current everyday clinical practice. All of the investigated drugs did not bring significant benefits compared to placebo or were associated with unbearable side effects, and traditional medicine lacks adequate methodology.

There are some orthographic errors (e.i. "dry month" at 399 and 495). Finally, the materials & methods section is completely absent, and a minor English proofreading would be advisable. 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer, thank you a lot for your comments.

 

We provided to correct the orthographic errors and to make a revision of the English as you indicated.

Regarding the materials & methods section, there isn’t  a material and methods section as  we performed our work like a narrative review.

However, we choose PubMed, EMBASE, Web of Science, ScienceDirect, and Google Scholar databases which are the most authoritative for the literature research.

 We thank you  again for your support.

 Best regards

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear authors, 

thank you for making the requested changes. 

I hope your review will help clinicians in preventing and treating xerostomia and its comlpications.