Immunological and Pathophysiological Outcomes of Helminth Infections and Type 2 Diabetes Comorbidity Studies in Humans and Experimental Animals—A Scoping Review

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors,

the topic of your literature based review was to anlayse the interaction of helminth infection and protection of Type 2 Diabetes mellitus.

You started with 430 papers and identified only 9 papers suitable for analysis, 3 with animal studies, 6 involving humans.

The topic is rather special - even for a journal like this - and would much better fit in a specialised journal like other authors did for the same topic :

The effects of helminth infections against type 2 diabetes

Yan-ru Gao, Rong-hui Zhang, Ru Li, Chun-lian Tang, Qun Pan & Peng Pen

Parasitology Research volume 120, pages1935–1942 (2021)

As a reviewer I cannot identified any faults in data reseach and recovery, but having in mind the scarce data availability and the low number of studies I do not agree wtih the conslusions drawn. There is no causative relationship, but just an observed one. It is a misere as the infection with helminth in a population for study purpose might be unethical, but the providance with helminth-derived products to analyse the effects is currently under progress. Thus, your review is observational by nature and should be placed in a more focussed journal on parasitology.

Author Response

Thank you for your comments.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript is for a review paper describes on the relationship between helminths infection and type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), by a literature reviewing. The manuscript is well composed as a review paper, and information herein is beneficial for researchers work on diabetes mellitus. Also, this manuscript would be of interests to some non-research people since many humans are suffered from T2DM worldwide. Thus, I suggest that this manuscript can be accepted in this journal after a minor revision.

 

Individual comments

1. Line 9: Add the name of a country.
2. Line173: Explain briefly on “Kato-Katz”.
3. Table 1. Reference (23): Eosinophils were mobilsed > mobilized
4. References: Need recheck and correction.

For example, in line 320: International journal of medical science > International Journal of Medical Science. Scientific names need to be written in different style of type. Need unification, for example in line 340; PLoS Negl Trop Dis and in line 378; PLoS neglected tropical diseases.

Author Response

Thank you for your comments.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The review article by Silas et al., titled Immunological and pathophysiological outcomes of helminth infections and type 2 diabetes comorbidity studies in humans and experimental animals - a scoping review. 

This is a well-written review, the authors covered the topic comprehensively. A few minor concerns need to add,

1. Authors should discuss briefly the TH1 and TH2 cytokines.
2. The mouse models demonstrate TH1 and TH2 immune responses (c57BL6 and Balb6), does human heterogeneity has such immune responses? does this involve the development of diabetes? needs to discuss.
3. Any specific reason that authors are confined to helminths or there is no role of protozoans?
4. Authors should include the following reference in the introduction or elsewhere. Gogulamudi, V.R., Dubey, M.L., Kaul, D. et al. Vitamins (A&D) and Isoprenoid (Chenodeoxycholic acid) molecules are accompanied by Th1 immunostimulatory response and therapeutic cure in vivo: possible antileishmanial drugs. Sci Rep 9, 8531 (2019) 

Author Response

Thank you for your comments.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx