Editorial Board of BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine
Dear Sir,
We would like to express our appreciation for all the comments and suggestions put forward by all the
reviewers. The manuscript has been corrected accordingly to the best of our ability. These are as listed
below.
Thank you
Reviewer: Assistant Professor Dr. GunjanGuha
Applied corrections
1. Use of Palm Kernel Cake (PKC) is the central
theme of this study. Purchasing it from a palm oil
mill doesn’t shed light on the standardization. This
study altogether may lead to an altogether different
result if the PKC is purchased from another mill.
Therefore, results generated out of such a study
could be dubious and overall non-reliable in
context to PKC obtained from a different source.
We do not agree to the comment of the possibility
in differences and the dubious nature of findings.
We would like to emphasize here that the oil palm
plantation and the oil palm factories practice
similar procedures during the oil extraction
process. The factories in Malaysia, apply similar
technique which is steam and high pressure to
extract the oil from palm kernel cake, thus the
profile of the residual compound and their
concentrations are almost similar. On the other
hand, at this stage the objective of the study is to
evaluate the possibility of the PKC extract as
hepatoprotective agent and obviously for future
work control and standardized extraction
procedures as well as the composition and efficacy
of the extract from PKC collected from different
factories would be stringently monitored. At this
stage, the findings are useful for us to evaluate
PKC as a source of hepatoprotective agent, before
venturing into massive collections of PKC from
different mill.
In this experiment, no animal feeding trial has been
conducted and only the hepatoprotective activity of
Though the authors attempt to enlist the ingredients
the PKC extract was tested. Therefore elucidation
through GC-MS spectroscopy, yet the exact
of active compounds would be sufficient to support
formulation of the parent product (PKC) is
the observed biological activity. The exact
necessary.
formulation would be dealt with in subsequent
experiments with live birds.
2. Unnecessary repetition of phrases and sentences
Correction applied.
should be avoided.
The similar terms used in this manuscript could be
found in the published articles below. Hence, we
would like to maintain the terms used in this
manuscript in the present format.
1- Ju, Rui-Ting, et al. "Anaerobic respiration and
antioxidant responses of Corythucha ciliata (Say)
adults to heat-induced oxidative stress under
laboratory and field conditions." Cell Stress and
Chaperones 19.2 (2014): 255-262.
3. Several phrases such as ‘heat induced chicken
hepatocytes’, ‘heat induced oxidative stress chicken
hepatocytes’, etc. cater no meaning.
2- Larkindale, Jane, and Marc R. Knight.
"Protection against heat stress-induced oxidative
damage in Arabidopsis involves calcium, abscisic
acid, ethylene, and salicylic acid." Plant
physiology 128.2 (2002): 682-695.
3- Mahla, R., et al. "Heat‐induced oxidative stress
and changes in protein profile in wheat
cultivars." Quality Assurance and Safety of Crops
& Foods 4.3 (2012): 137-137.
4- Morano, Kevin A., Chris M. Grant, and W. Scott
Moye-Rowley. "The response to heat shock and
oxidative
stress
in
Saccharomyces
cerevisiae." Genetics190.4 (2012): 1157-1195.
5- Davidson, John F., et al. "Oxidative stress is
involved in heat-induced cell death in
Saccharomyces cerevisiae." Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences 93.10 (1996): 51165121.
To the all these sections listed below in material
and methods and in other parts of the manuscript,
necessary references were included.
4. At many places (particularly Materials and
Methods section), legitimate references are
missing. Carrying out extraction procedures
without proper reference could yield ambiguous
results.
5. An elaborate language overhaul is required.
-
Microwave-ultrasound assisted extraction
-
Antioxidant enzyme assay
-
Gene expression analyses
-
Western blot analysis
The fluency of the written English throughout the
manuscript was checked and corrected.
6. Rather than mentioning the sentence ‘the
experiment was performed intriplicates’ over and
over again, the authors can add it in the ‘statistical
analysis’segment of the Materials and Methods
section.
The following sentences “All measurements were
carried out on triplicate” was added to the statistical
analysis part and‘the experiment was performed in
triplicates’ removed throughout the manuscript.
7. I am attaching the pdf of the manuscript with
other corrections tagged in.
All the suggested corrections have been included
throughout the manuscript and highlighted in red.
Reviewer: Associate Prof. Dr. Said moselhy
Applied corrections
The rational of the study has been described in the
introduction as shown below.
The rational of the study should be mentioned
Thereby, it might be promising to consider PKC as
a source of bioactive phytochemical compounds for
therapeutic purposes. The supply of valuable
phytochemicals from a reliable and continuous
source such as PKC would ensure a sustainable
poultry industry.
On what basis the authours uses the doses of PKC
extract as hepatoprotective
The preliminary experiments conducted by
researchers provided useful information on range of
applicable doses.
It is preferable to separate results from discussion
to be more clrear.
It is a good point but the authors would like to
maintain the present format of the manuscript.
Reviewer: Professor Dr. Jalal Pourahmad
Applied corrections
The only weakness is that the article was not well
written and the text English needs
substantial improvement and edition. I recommend
the authors to ask a native English speaker to
completely edit their manuscript
The English has been improved throughout the
manuscript.
Additional revisions request by the editor:
Improve the style of written English
The corrections have been applied
Please include Emails of co-authors in the title page All emails were included.
Please remove figures from main manuscript and
The figures removed from the manuscript and were
upload as separate figure files.
uploaded as separate files.
Please include figure legends after the references
section.
The figure legends included after references.