Timothy Shipley, PhD
In-house Editor
BMC Gastroenterology
14 February 2012
Dear Dr Shipley,
Re: Manuscript reference number 1652596493527337
Please find attached our revised manuscript entitled “Efficacy of omeprazole, famotidine, mosapride
and teprenone in patients with upper gastrointestinal symptoms: an omeprazole-controlled
randomized study (J-FOCUS),” in which we have taken into account the additional comments
provided by the reviewers.
We wish to thank you and the reviewers for taking the time to re-review our manuscript. The
comments were particularly insightful and have helped us to improve our manuscript. Our responses
to individual comments are summarized below. The revisions to the text are indicated with yellow
highlighting in the manuscript and by page and line numbers in our point-by-point responses below.
Please address all correspondence to:
Kouichi Sakurai, MD
Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology,
Graduate School of Medical Sciences, Kumamoto University
1-1-1 Honjo, Kumamoto 860-8556, Japan
Tel: +81-96-373-5149
Fax: +81-96-371-0582
E-mail: sakurai@s3.kcn-tv.ne.jp
We hope that the revised manuscript is now acceptable for publication in BMC Gastroenterology. We
look forward to hearing from you in due course.
Yours sincerely,
Kouichi Sakurai, MD
Responses to the peer reviewers’ comments
Reviewer: Grigorios Leontiadis
The authors have addressed adequately point #6 and point #8 adequately. With regards to point #5, I
still believe that the use of urine antibody test was inappropriate, but it is not worth engaging in
further exchange of arguments. My understanding is that my thoughts will be published alongside the
article. The final decision rests with the Editors. I am confident that future readers will be able to see
that future guidelines will not propose this test for clinical use, let alone for selection of participants
in clinical trials. For the time being, a reasonable compromise that will protect the reputation of
BMC Gastroenterology, would be to re-phrase the wording as follows:
“First, we used a urine antibody test to screen patients for evidence of H. pylori infection. Although
this test shows high sensitivity and accuracy specificity, it is has not been recommended by guidelines
as a screening test as yet. It is possible that some patients without H. pylori infection were included in
this study.”
Response: Thank you for your comment. In accordance with the outstanding concerns, we have
amended the paragraph as follows:
“First, we used a urine antibody test to screen patients for evidence of H. pylori infection. Although
this test shows high sensitivity and accuracy, it has not yet been recommended by guidelines as a
screening test. It is therefore possible that some patients with H. pylori infection were included in this
study.” (Page 19, Lines 442–446).