Cytotoxicity and Antimicrobial Activity of BioAkt^TM and Phytic Acid: A Laboratory-Based Study

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript has been well written however, the reviewer’s comment is to revise the result section in a better understandable way. The reviewer’s suggestion is to express the result like. ------- statistical test showed a statistical significant different in cell viability in xx group (mean value ± standard deviation) compare to yy group (mean value ± standard deviation) p=000.

Please add statistical significance in figure 4

Please add standard deviation cap in the bar graph of figure 1-4.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for your positive comments. We have improved results, added statistical significance in Figure 4 and insert standard deviations in the Figures 1-4. We hope that our manuscript is now suitable for publication.

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors,

Thank you for the good work. I have a few comments.

The English and grammar need extensive adjustments, and I suggest you use a program to help you.

Regarding the work, first, you need to provide an ethical committee approval for this work. 

Second, the introduction discussed the disadvantages of sodium hypochlorite, but the study didn't compare those disadvantages with the proposed solution; you need to be more specific in the introduction.

The discussion needs some rewriting as it starts as a result more than a discussion.

 

The last thing is that I didn't find a conclusion section.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for your positive comments. We revised the manuscript, attempting to address each of the concerns as detailed below. We hope that this paper is now suitable for your publication.

1. The English and grammar need extensive adjustments, and I suggest you use a program to help you.

Authors’ reply: The manuscript has been revised by a professional proofreading service.

 

2. Regarding the work, first, you need to provide an ethical committee approval for this work. 

Authors' reply: The study, although belonging to laboratory studies and therefore presumably requiring ethics committee approval, did not involve experiments on human or animal cells with direct sampling of biological material. Cells and bacteria, such as the mouse macrophage cell line J774A.1 (ATCC@ TIB -67TM), were purchased from the America Type Culture Collection (Rockville, MD), a private, nonprofit, global biological resource center and standards organization that provides biomaterials. As stated on the ATCC website (https://www.atcc.org/about-us), ATCC reference materials are cited as standards by agencies such as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Clinical Laboratory Standards Institute, the U.S. Pharmacopeia, the European Pharmacopeia, the Japanese Pharmacopeia, and the World Health Organization.

 

3. Second, the introduction discussed the disadvantages of sodium hypochlorite, but the study didn't compare those disadvantages with the proposed solution; you need to be more specific in the introduction.

Authors' reply: Currently, there are no comparative studies between BioAkt or phytic acid and NaOCl in endodontics. The effects of these compounds on soft tissues and generally on the oral mucosa are still unknown. We have added some information in rows 68-72, 81-83, and 226-230. The current state of the literature on BioAkt and phytic acid has also been summarized in rows 272-275.

 

4. The discussion needs some rewriting as it starts as a result more than a discussion.

 

Authors' reply: We have changed the beginning of the discussion.

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors,

Thank you for your good work, but I still have some concerns and points that need to be clarified.

1-In the introduction and the discussion, you compared the NaOCl and EDTA to BioAct and Phytic acid. Despite that, in the materials and methods, there was no mention of EDTA; please explain or readjust your writing according to the actual material and methods used because this is very confusing.

 

2- Using only 1.5 concentrations of NaOCl was slightly unjustified; please use better references from published research than the recommendation of endodontic societies because you used 3 different concentrations of Phytic acid and one of BioACT while you chose this; somehow, a low concentration of NaOCl! 

4- in the materials and methods, please specify the brand of the NaOCl and how you got the exact 1.5 concentration.

 

5- is the BioACT recommended to be used with Phytic acid, or should each be used separately? Because the introduction indicates that they should be used together while compared to each other in the research. please explain

 

3- please write a conclusion section.

 

 

Thank you again.

 

  

  

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for your valuable work and for time dedicated to support us to improve the manuscript’s quality. We are very grateful for the very thorough critiques and constructive suggestions and believe that they have greatly improved the paper. We hope that you will now find this paper suitable for your Journal.

 

Dear authors,

Thank you for your good work, but I still have some concerns and points that need to be clarified.

1-In the introduction and the discussion, you compared the NaOCl and EDTA to BioAct and Phytic acid. Despite that, in the materials and methods, there was no mention of EDTA; please explain or readjust your writing according to the actual material and methods used because this is very confusing.

Authors’ response: The aim of our work was to evaluate the antimicrobial activity and cytotoxicity of BioAkt and phytic acid compared separately to NaOCl. In the introduction to the study, we reported the gold standard procedure given by the combination of NaOCl and EDTA, the latter used as a calcium chelator and to remove debris and no objective of our work. As in other studies (see Tonini et al. 2020 or Nassar et al. 2021), we compared BioAkt with NaOCl and phytic acid with NaOCl.

 

2- Using only 1.5 concentrations of NaOCl was slightly unjustified; please use better references from published research than the recommendation of endodontic societies because you used 3 different concentrations of Phytic acid and one of BioACT while you chose this; somehow, a low concentration of NaOCl! 

Authors’ response: We have explained our choice of NaOCl concentration at rows 92-95. Specifically, we used the NaOCl concentration recommended by ESE and AAE for regenerative endodontics. For phytic acid and BioAkt, there are currently no recommendations from endodontic societies, so we chose to test three different concentrations of IP6, such as Nassar et al. (2021), who tested IP6 at concentrations of 0.5%, 1%, 2%, and 5%, and BioAkt, as previously performed by Tonini et al. (2021).

4- in the materials and methods, please specify the brand of the NaOCl and how you got the exact 1.5 concentration.

Authors’ response: we have added this information (row 92).

5- is the BioACT recommended to be used with Phytic acid, or should each be used separately? Because the introduction indicates that they should be used together while compared to each other in the research. please explain

Authors’ response: We compared BioAkt vs NaOCl and IP6 vs NaOCl, i.e., separately. To avoid misunderstanding, we added the adverb "separately" when presenting the study objective.

3- please write a conclusion section.

Authors’ response: We have added a subtitle for the conclusion.

Round 3

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors 

I will accept in the current form but I have big objection on the concentration of NaOCl used in this study as it didn’t do justice to the NaOCl results!
best regards