Reviewer's report
Title:Early stage transplantation of bone marrow cells markedly ameliorates
copper metabolism and liver function in Wilson's disease mice
Version: 1Date:16 August 2010
Reviewer: Elke Roeb
Reviewer's report:
In their work Chen and co-workers examined the effect of BM transplantation on
copper metabolism and liver function in Wilson´s disease mice. They authors
describe an improvement of liver function and copper metabolism one to 12
weeks after Tx..
Although dealing with an interesting theme there are major concerns which have
to be eliminated before publication.
Major points:
The injection of saline does not represent an adequate control group. The
transplantation of BM cells from Wilson disease mice (toxic milk mice) into
Wilson disease mice, would be the right control in addition to the super control
(saline).
Since liver function and copper concentration are already improved one week
after transplantation it is rather speculative whether the kind of BM cells is
responsible for the improvement. This point should be elaborated in additinal
experiments.
The statistical analysis should be recalculated by a testing appropriate for not
normally distributed data (e.g. Mann-Whitney-U-Test). Alternatively the authors
should show a normal distribution before using the Students t test. The exact
N-number should be indicated in each single figure under each single column.
All together the manuscript seems to be too descriptive since the effect of BM
transplantation on the amelioration of liver function is far from being explained.
Minor points:
The authors should demonstrate whether liver fibrosis (collagen, hydroxyprolin or
sirius red staining) is influenced by BM-transplatation in toxic milk mice.
Level of interest: An article whose findings are important to those with closely
related research interests
Quality of written English: Needs some language corrections before being
published
Statistical review: Yes, and I have assessed the statistics in my report.
Reviewer's report
Title:Early stage transplantation of bone marrow cells markedly ameliorates
copper metabolism and liver function in Wilson's disease mice
Version: 1Date:16 August 2010
Reviewer: Elke Roeb
Reviewer's report:
In their work Chen and co-workers examined the effect of BM transplantation on
copper metabolism and liver function in Wilson´s disease mice. They authors
describe an improvement of liver function and copper metabolism one to 12
weeks after Tx..
Although dealing with an interesting theme there are major concerns which have
to be eliminated before publication.
Major points:
The injection of saline does not represent an adequate control group. The
transplantation of BM cells from Wilson disease mice (toxic milk mice) into
Wilson disease mice, would be the right control in addition to the super control
(saline).
Since liver function and copper concentration are already improved one week
after transplantation it is rather speculative whether the kind of BM cells is
responsible for the improvement. This point should be elaborated in additinal
experiments.
The statistical analysis should be recalculated by a testing appropriate for not
normally distributed data (e.g. Mann-Whitney-U-Test). Alternatively the authors
should show a normal distribution before using the Students t test. The exact
N-number should be indicated in each single figure under each single column.
All together the manuscript seems to be too descriptive since the effect of BM
transplantation on the amelioration of liver function is far from being explained.
Minor points:
The authors should demonstrate whether liver fibrosis (collagen, hydroxyprolin or
sirius red staining) is influenced by BM-transplatation in toxic milk mice.
Level of interest: An article whose findings are important to those with closely
related research interests
Quality of written English: Needs some language corrections before being
published
Statistical review: Yes, and I have assessed the statistics in my report.
Please review this paper.
user
Reviewer's report
Title:Early stage transplantation of bone marrow cells markedly ameliorates
copper metabolism and liver function in Wilson's disease mice
Version: 1Date:16 August 2010
Reviewer: Elke Roeb
Reviewer's report:
In their work Chen and co-workers examined the effect of BM transplantation on
copper metabolism and liver function in Wilson´s disease mice. They authors
describe an improvement of liver function and copper metabolism one to 12
weeks after Tx..
Although dealing with an interesting theme there are major concerns which have
to be eliminated before publication.
Major points:
The injection of saline does not represent an adequate control group. The
transplantation of BM cells from Wilson disease mice (toxic milk mice) into
Wilson disease mice, would be the right control in addition to the super control
(saline).
Since liver function and copper concentration are already improved one week
after transplantation it is rather speculative whether the kind of BM cells is
responsible for the improvement. This point should be elaborated in additinal
experiments.
The statistical analysis should be recalculated by a testing appropriate for not
normally distributed data (e.g. Mann-Whitney-U-Test). Alternatively the authors
should show a normal distribution before using the Students t test. The exact
N-number should be indicated in each single figure under each single column.
All together the manuscript seems to be too descriptive since the effect of BM
transplantation on the amelioration of liver function is far from being explained.
Minor points:
The authors should demonstrate whether liver fibrosis (collagen, hydroxyprolin or
sirius red staining) is influenced by BM-transplatation in toxic milk mice.
Level of interest: An article whose findings are important to those with closely
related research interests
Quality of written English: Needs some language corrections before being
published
Statistical review: Yes, and I have assessed the statistics in my report.
assistant