Reviewer's report
Title:Moxibustion for Ulcerative Colitis: A Systematic Review
Version: 1Date:3 February 2010
Reviewer: Peter Laszlo Lakatos
Reviewer's report:
This is an interesting review on the role of complementary and alternative
medicine use, specifically moxibustion in ulcerative colitis. The problem with the
review as already discussed by the authors is that the quality of the trials was
very low, thus no valid metaanalysis could have been done. The conclusion of
the authors that the trials were of low quality and therefore inconclusive,
therefore more rigorous studies seem warranted is appropriate. The potential
impact of the paper is very low, in contrast it highlights the problems with CAM
based clinical trials and hopefully can contribute to the better design of future
CAM trials.
Major compulsory revisions;
1. The methods are properly used, however from the abstract it seems that
moxibustion is an effective treatment in UC. This part of the abstract should be
rewritten highlighting that most of trials were very low quality, and any
metaanalysis is highly biased.
2. The study of Fan et al utilized a completely different `conventional` treatment
strategy (that includes treatment option without proven efficacy) and should be
excluded from the final analysis.
3. Since all studies were conducted in Asia, all conclusions should be limited to
Asian populations because of the lack of efficacy in other populations.
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:Moxibustion for Ulcerative Colitis: A Systematic Review
Version: 1Date:3 February 2010
Reviewer: Peter Laszlo Lakatos
Reviewer's report:
This is an interesting review on the role of complementary and alternative
medicine use, specifically moxibustion in ulcerative colitis. The problem with the
review as already discussed by the authors is that the quality of the trials was
very low, thus no valid metaanalysis could have been done. The conclusion of
the authors that the trials were of low quality and therefore inconclusive,
therefore more rigorous studies seem warranted is appropriate. The potential
impact of the paper is very low, in contrast it highlights the problems with CAM
based clinical trials and hopefully can contribute to the better design of future
CAM trials.
Major compulsory revisions;
1. The methods are properly used, however from the abstract it seems that
moxibustion is an effective treatment in UC. This part of the abstract should be
rewritten highlighting that most of trials were very low quality, and any
metaanalysis is highly biased.
2. The study of Fan et al utilized a completely different `conventional` treatment
strategy (that includes treatment option without proven efficacy) and should be
excluded from the final analysis.
3. Since all studies were conducted in Asia, all conclusions should be limited to
Asian populations because of the lack of efficacy in other populations.
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:Moxibustion for Ulcerative Colitis: A Systematic Review
Version: 1Date:3 February 2010
Reviewer: Peter Laszlo Lakatos
Reviewer's report:
This is an interesting review on the role of complementary and alternative
medicine use, specifically moxibustion in ulcerative colitis. The problem with the
review as already discussed by the authors is that the quality of the trials was
very low, thus no valid metaanalysis could have been done. The conclusion of
the authors that the trials were of low quality and therefore inconclusive,
therefore more rigorous studies seem warranted is appropriate. The potential
impact of the paper is very low, in contrast it highlights the problems with CAM
based clinical trials and hopefully can contribute to the better design of future
CAM trials.
Major compulsory revisions;
1. The methods are properly used, however from the abstract it seems that
moxibustion is an effective treatment in UC. This part of the abstract should be
rewritten highlighting that most of trials were very low quality, and any
metaanalysis is highly biased.
2. The study of Fan et al utilized a completely different `conventional` treatment
strategy (that includes treatment option without proven efficacy) and should be
excluded from the final analysis.
3. Since all studies were conducted in Asia, all conclusions should be limited to
Asian populations because of the lack of efficacy in other populations.
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