Sources of Variation in Food-Related Metabolites during Pregnancy
, Sandi M. Azab 3,4, Sonia S. Anand 2,3,5, Lehana Thabane 5,6,7, Meera Shanmuganathan 8, Katherine M. Morrison 9,10, Stephanie A. Atkinson 9, Jennifer C. Stearns 3,11, Koon K. Teo 2,3,5, Philip Britz-McKibbin 8 and Russell J. de Souza 2,5,*
Ankita Punetha
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The publication is interesting. I have no comments.
Author Response
Reviewer #1: No comments.
Response: We thank the reviewer for taking the time to review our manuscript.
Reviewer 2 Report
In the current study, the authors have investigated the influence of non-dietary factors (like ethnicity, maternal age, gestational age, prepregnancy BMI, physical activity, and smoking) on food related metabolites during pregnancy. In case of metabolites that produced endogenously, biotransformed by gut microbiota, or derived from multiple food sources, the unique contribution of dietary factors was found similar or lower compared to non-dietary factors.
The article is well structured into sections and subsections and professionally written. It is within the scope of the journal.
There are some suggestions to be improve the article:
1) The use of Venn Diagram will make it more appealing to the readers. For instance, the metabolites unique or similar in both the cohorts can be shown.
2) References: The referencing format should be consistent. Some references have missing page numbers, volume, or doi, doi with hyperlinks, duplicated doi, or presence of special characters. Also, the Journal names are abbreviated in some cases but not in others. For instance, check references – 2, 3, 12, 13, 18, 20, 26, 28, 29, 55, 60, 63, and 64.
3) The discussion section can be improved to clearly highlight the findings of the current study and how it advances the field. Also, to make it more informative the articles that discuss the details of dietary Biomarkers and their variability can be incorporated. For instance,
Picó C, Serra F, Rodríguez AM, Keijer J, Palou A. Biomarkers of Nutrition and Health: New Tools for New Approaches. Nutrients. 2019 May 16;11(5):1092. doi: 10.3390/nu11051092. PMID: 31100942; PMCID: PMC6567133.
Maruvada P, Lampe JW, Wishart DS, Barupal D, Chester DN, Dodd D, Djoumbou-Feunang Y, Dorrestein PC, Dragsted LO, Draper J, Duffy LC, Dwyer JT, Emenaker NJ, Fiehn O, Gerszten RE, B Hu F, Karp RW, Klurfeld DM, Laughlin MR, Little AR, Lynch CJ, Moore SC, Nicastro HL, O'Brien DM, Ordovás JM, Osganian SK, Playdon M, Prentice R, Raftery D, Reisdorph N, Roche HM, Ross SA, Sang S, Scalbert A, Srinivas PR, Zeisel SH. Perspective: Dietary Biomarkers of Intake and Exposure-Exploration with Omics Approaches. Adv Nutr. 2020 Mar 1;11(2):200-215. doi: 10.1093/advances/nmz075. Erratum in: Adv Nutr. 2020 Mar 1;11(2):468. PMID: 31386148; PMCID: PMC7442414.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
