Effects of COVID-19 Pandemic on Metabolic Status and Psychological Correlates of a Cohort of Italian NAFLD Outpatients
, Marta Minguzzi 2, Simona Leoni 1, Roberta Capelli 2, Alice Secomandi 2, Rusi Chen 2, Chiara Abbati 2, Ernestina Santangeli 2, Katia Mattarozzi 2 and Piscaglia Fabio 1,2,*Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
We really appreciated your interesting comments about our paper. We revised our manuscript following your suggestions.
- Table 3 was edited with full data regarding both A and B group.
- We shortened the introduction focusing on relevant literature to facilitate the readers.
- We modified the discussion section to clarify and to weigh in your observation regarding a possible bias determined by new diagnosis of metabolic diseases in group B. However as we stated in our discussion the increase of reported trend for alterations in psycho-physical health status was not limited to subjects who received a new diagnosis of diabetes or hypertension.
- We are well aware of such limitation which is the most important of our study, in fact several analysis were hampered by a low sample size.
Unfortunately due to the limitations to personal freedom during COVID-19 pandemic it was impossible to conduct live interviews with our patients, thus we were forced to use a remote approach which in our opinion reduced the number of subjects available to answer our questions.
To avoid significant biases it is impossible to increase the sample size retrospectively due to the nature of the study, therefore apart from underlying this limitation in our discussion section we can not make significant changes to resolve this limitation.
Reviewer 2 Report
Ferri Silvia et.al evaluated the effects of Sars-CoV2-related lockdown on a small non-advanced NAFLD outpatient cohort. Despite the sample size being small and thus does not have too much statistical power to distinguish detailed factors contributing to the body weight reduction related NAFLD progress, the study is generally well-structured and well-written, and presented. And the concept of providing psychological support for NAFLD patients, especially during stressful conditions could be an important message for primary care providers in the field.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
We are glad you appreciated our effort to present our data on this relevant topic.
