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Thanks for attending the corrections in the corrected version. Therefore, the manuscript is now accepted for publication at PeerJ.
[# PeerJ Staff Note - this decision was reviewed and approved by Vladimir Uversky, a PeerJ Section Editor covering this Section #]
Please attend the corrections made in the attached PDF. These are mostly to change to small case and italicize some chemical names. Those corrections are needed to further proceed.
Authors have answered to previous comments and manuscript is now acceptable for publication. I have annotated some minor corrections to be done.
See above. Authors have improved the manuscript
See above
Manuscropt has been improved and is now acceptable for publication.
Besides the comments of the reviewers, a PDF with specific comments on the manuscript is attached. Main concerns are details on the production of the extract. Also, the analysis (calculated graph vs. experimental data) to obtain the IC50 for porcine lipase is important to show. A table or a comparison between the IC50 values for other plant extracts with lipase inhibiting activity and vs. the Orlistat control. Typos and formatting details are also mentioned.
Please provide a detailed rebuttal letter aside your amended manuscript.
[# PeerJ Staff Note: It is PeerJ policy that additional references suggested during the peer-review process should only be included if the authors are in agreement that they are relevant and useful #]
The editors recommend two separate chapters Results and Discussion. Here they have been combined, which I think is right, because in this type of work, which is actually based on analysis and compounds identification, the discussion can not take up much place if the identification is not in doubt.
The work is in the journal's profile. Separation and identification of compounds have been properly planned and performed.
This type of research always expands knowledge in the field of etnomedicine. In this case, it is possible to develop new dietary supplements to reduce obesity. The tested extract has much lower effectiveness compared to orlistat, so it should be considered only in terms of a natural functional dietary supplement. That's why, in my opinion, it would be necessary to add some references to the reviews work, e.g.
Possible anti-obesity therapeutics from nature--a review. Yun JW. Phytochemistry. 2010 Oct;71(14-15):1625-41.
Synthetic and Natural Lipase Inhibitors.Bialecka-Florjanczyk E et al. Mini Rev Med Chem. (2018) 18(8):672-683.
The proper methods were used and the compounds were correctly identified. Measurements of lipase activity indicate the potential practical use of the extract in the treatment of obesity.
That's why I would like to supplement the references with some other reviews in this field, e.g.
Possible anti-obesity therapeutics from nature--a review. Yun JW. Phytochemistry. 2010 Oct;71(14-15):1625-41.
Synthetic and Natural Lipase Inhibitors.Bialecka-Florjanczyk E et al. Mini Rev Med Chem. (2018) 18(8):672-683.
- Some more updated references should be included. There are recent papers (see for example Marrelli et al., 2016 and 2018) dealing with natural phenolics having pancreatic lipase inhibitory effects.
- English should be revised
Experiments are generally well designed and well described.
HPLC farce of the extract seems indeed quite simple, while in Table 1, about 23 compounds are reported. I would suggest to number the identified ones and add their UV spectra in the table. UV is also very important to confirm identity of flavonoids.
Authors should include and compare their data with more recent results from other plants which show inhibition of pancreatic lipase.
Sistematic name of plants (genus species, but not Author or variety) should be written in italic: Authors should check for this in all the text.
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