Title: Latent profiles of fatigue in inflammatory bowel disease
Version: 1 Date: 01 Jan 2024
Reviewer's report:
This study aims to identify different types of fatigue in people with IBD using fatigue, anxiety
& depression, and sleep quality scores. The authors attempt to assess the relationship of fatigue
to each of these categories, including active IBD disease using latent profile analysis
Unsurprisingly, the authors identified that active IBD disease was associated with greater levels
of fatigue, but the highest “most severe” profiles were those with poor mental health.
Major:
The authors clearly identify the limitations of the study: selection bias due to recruitment via
social media/tertiary centre and hence a specific target audience, and also the lack of an objective
measure of clinical disease activity to discern IBS symptoms vs. IBD, making any conclusions
that can be drawn from the study difficult.
Whilst they identify that female gender, opioid usage and obesity were associated with higher
fatigue profiles, higher fatigue profiles were seen in those with higher disease activity, for which
obesity could be associated with higher disease activity.
- Was there data on comorbidities eg. heart failure, diabetes, thyroid disease, as these could cause
fatigue? If there was, could they be included in Table 1?
- Could the authors further elaborate any clinical implications of this work how they think this
piece of research eg. to screen for active disease and mental health problems in those who
complain of fatigue in clinic?
Minor:
- In the conclusion, the authors state “correlation between depression and fatigue underlines the
importance… etc.” – given no correlation statistic was given, I would suggest rephrasing
- Few minor spelling errors: prolife
Title: Latent profiles of fatigue in inflammatory bowel disease
Version: 1 Date: 01 Jan 2024
Reviewer's report:
This study aims to identify different types of fatigue in people with IBD using fatigue, anxiety
& depression, and sleep quality scores. The authors attempt to assess the relationship of fatigue
to each of these categories, including active IBD disease using latent profile analysis
Unsurprisingly, the authors identified that active IBD disease was associated with greater levels
of fatigue, but the highest “most severe” profiles were those with poor mental health.
Major:
The authors clearly identify the limitations of the study: selection bias due to recruitment via
social media/tertiary centre and hence a specific target audience, and also the lack of an objective
measure of clinical disease activity to discern IBS symptoms vs. IBD, making any conclusions
that can be drawn from the study difficult.
Whilst they identify that female gender, opioid usage and obesity were associated with higher
fatigue profiles, higher fatigue profiles were seen in those with higher disease activity, for which
obesity could be associated with higher disease activity.
- Was there data on comorbidities eg. heart failure, diabetes, thyroid disease, as these could cause
fatigue? If there was, could they be included in Table 1?
- Could the authors further elaborate any clinical implications of this work how they think this
piece of research eg. to screen for active disease and mental health problems in those who
complain of fatigue in clinic?
Minor:
- In the conclusion, the authors state “correlation between depression and fatigue underlines the
importance… etc.” – given no correlation statistic was given, I would suggest rephrasing
- Few minor spelling errors: prolife
Please review this paper.
user
Title: Latent profiles of fatigue in inflammatory bowel disease
Version: 1 Date: 01 Jan 2024
Reviewer's report:
This study aims to identify different types of fatigue in people with IBD using fatigue, anxiety
& depression, and sleep quality scores. The authors attempt to assess the relationship of fatigue
to each of these categories, including active IBD disease using latent profile analysis
Unsurprisingly, the authors identified that active IBD disease was associated with greater levels
of fatigue, but the highest “most severe” profiles were those with poor mental health.
Major:
The authors clearly identify the limitations of the study: selection bias due to recruitment via
social media/tertiary centre and hence a specific target audience, and also the lack of an objective
measure of clinical disease activity to discern IBS symptoms vs. IBD, making any conclusions
that can be drawn from the study difficult.
Whilst they identify that female gender, opioid usage and obesity were associated with higher
fatigue profiles, higher fatigue profiles were seen in those with higher disease activity, for which
obesity could be associated with higher disease activity.
- Was there data on comorbidities eg. heart failure, diabetes, thyroid disease, as these could cause
fatigue? If there was, could they be included in Table 1?
- Could the authors further elaborate any clinical implications of this work how they think this
piece of research eg. to screen for active disease and mental health problems in those who
complain of fatigue in clinic?
Minor:
- In the conclusion, the authors state “correlation between depression and fatigue underlines the
importance… etc.” – given no correlation statistic was given, I would suggest rephrasing
- Few minor spelling errors: prolife
assistant