Reviewer's report
Title:Blastocystosis in patients with gastrointestinal symptoms: a case-control
study
Version: 3Date:1 June 2012
Reviewer: Chad Porter
Reviewer's report:
Major compulsory revisions
1) The authors should conduct more sophisticated statistical analyses such as
multiple logistic regression to control for potential covariates or confounders.
2) The authors should explicity state the study design. Based on the methods
and results, it appears as though this was a cross-sectional study, but it is not
entirely clear based on author responses.
3) Tables 1&2 should be combined.
4) The authors need to significantly expand the discussion to include the
limitations of the reported study. Such discussion should include limitations of the
study design, sources of potential bias, the lack of assessment of potentially
important confounder, etc.
Minor Essential Revisions
1) Numerous grammatical and punctuation errors remain in the submitted
document and should be corrected.
2) Phrasing in parts of the discussion is confusing. For example, in sentence 2 of
paragraph 2 of the discussion, the authors state "...intestinal inflammation
induced by this parasite has a significant role in the discreminatory diagnosis
from other IBDs." It is unclear what is meant here. What are the other IBDs? How
does inflammation from this parasite assist in diagnosis?
Level of interest: An article of limited interest
Quality of written English: Needs some language corrections before being
published
Statistical review: Yes, and I have assessed the statistics in my report.
Declaration of competing interests:
I declare that I have no competing interests.
Reviewer's report
Title:Blastocystosis in patients with gastrointestinal symptoms: a case-control
study
Version: 3Date:1 June 2012
Reviewer: Chad Porter
Reviewer's report:
Major compulsory revisions
1) The authors should conduct more sophisticated statistical analyses such as
multiple logistic regression to control for potential covariates or confounders.
2) The authors should explicity state the study design. Based on the methods
and results, it appears as though this was a cross-sectional study, but it is not
entirely clear based on author responses.
3) Tables 1&2 should be combined.
4) The authors need to significantly expand the discussion to include the
limitations of the reported study. Such discussion should include limitations of the
study design, sources of potential bias, the lack of assessment of potentially
important confounder, etc.
Minor Essential Revisions
1) Numerous grammatical and punctuation errors remain in the submitted
document and should be corrected.
2) Phrasing in parts of the discussion is confusing. For example, in sentence 2 of
paragraph 2 of the discussion, the authors state "...intestinal inflammation
induced by this parasite has a significant role in the discreminatory diagnosis
from other IBDs." It is unclear what is meant here. What are the other IBDs? How
does inflammation from this parasite assist in diagnosis?
Level of interest: An article of limited interest
Quality of written English: Needs some language corrections before being
published
Statistical review: Yes, and I have assessed the statistics in my report.
Declaration of competing interests:
I declare that I have no competing interests.
Please review this paper.
user
Reviewer's report
Title:Blastocystosis in patients with gastrointestinal symptoms: a case-control
study
Version: 3Date:1 June 2012
Reviewer: Chad Porter
Reviewer's report:
Major compulsory revisions
1) The authors should conduct more sophisticated statistical analyses such as
multiple logistic regression to control for potential covariates or confounders.
2) The authors should explicity state the study design. Based on the methods
and results, it appears as though this was a cross-sectional study, but it is not
entirely clear based on author responses.
3) Tables 1&2 should be combined.
4) The authors need to significantly expand the discussion to include the
limitations of the reported study. Such discussion should include limitations of the
study design, sources of potential bias, the lack of assessment of potentially
important confounder, etc.
Minor Essential Revisions
1) Numerous grammatical and punctuation errors remain in the submitted
document and should be corrected.
2) Phrasing in parts of the discussion is confusing. For example, in sentence 2 of
paragraph 2 of the discussion, the authors state "...intestinal inflammation
induced by this parasite has a significant role in the discreminatory diagnosis
from other IBDs." It is unclear what is meant here. What are the other IBDs? How
does inflammation from this parasite assist in diagnosis?
Level of interest: An article of limited interest
Quality of written English: Needs some language corrections before being
published
Statistical review: Yes, and I have assessed the statistics in my report.
Declaration of competing interests:
I declare that I have no competing interests.
assistant