New Advances and Perspectives of Influenza Prevention: Current State of the Art

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments for the author of Scientia Pharmaceutica manuscript scipharm-2429359:

The authors of the Scientia Pharmaceutica manuscript “New advances and perspectives of prevention of influenza: current state of art”, review approaches toward preventing influenza virus infection in the current era of molecular biology.  Specifically, they focus on the virus itself, secondary bacterial complications, surveillance efforts, and current vaccine approaches.  While overall, the information is presented in a clear manner, below are some comments that I would like the authors to address as they revise the manuscript.   

General Comments:

1. On page 1, line 32, it states that “…everyone has had the flu at least once in their life.”  This should be modified to indicate a minimum age (10 years old) since there are pediatric populations that don’t have influenza until they are naturally exposed, and some vaccinated individuals don’t have a true flu infection until the vaccine fails to protect against the current circulating strain.
2. The authors should review the sentence on lines 170-172.  It was unclear what point the authors are trying to make with this statement, especially in the context of “…circulating rabies influenza viruses.” 
3. Overall, the review would benefit from proofreading that focuses on sentence and paragraph structure. 
4. On line 263, the authors indicate that “The universal flu vaccine” only protects for 12 months.  What is the citation that shows this?  Is this protection against primary infection?  Is this due to viral mutation or waning immunity? 

See comments about sentence and paragraph structure in the main review.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

we appreciate your valuable comments. Here our point-by-point answers marked with green. 

• On page 1, line 32, it states that “…everyone has had the flu at least once in their life.”  This should be modified to indicate a minimum age (10 years old) since there are pediatric populations that don’t have influenza until they are naturally exposed, and some vaccinated individuals don’t have a true flu infection until the vaccine fails to protect against the current circulating strain. Done. We added this information to clarify our  thoughts. 
• The authors should review the sentence on lines 170-172.  It was unclear what point the authors are trying to make with this statement, especially in the context of “…circulating rabies influenza viruses.” Done. We deleted word 'rabies' and modified the sentence.
• Overall, the review would benefit from proofreading that focuses on sentence and paragraph structure. Done. We made proofreading and improved paragraph structure.
• On line 263, the authors indicate that “The universal flu vaccine” only protects for 12 months.  What is the citation that shows this?  Is this protection against primary infection?  Is this due to viral mutation or waning immunity? Done. We decided to delete this sentence to avoid misunderstanding.

Thank you for collaboration.

Kind regards, Dr. Vol Oberemok and co-authors.

Author Response File: Author Response.doc

Reviewer 2 Report

This manuscript is well written. Influenza continues a threat to public health and animals. A better vaccine is urgently need. 

Minor comments:

In Figure 1, different vaccine types were listed. Can the little carton of the virus and antigens match to it should be? For example, an influenza virus should contain eight segments as the genome, and the HA and NA are little spikes on the surface of the virus particle.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

we appreciate your valuable comments. We made our figure more realistic.

Thank you for collaboration.

Kind regards, Dr. Vol Oberemok and co-authors.

Author Response File: Author Response.doc