Review Reports

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for this manuscript submission, novel in approach.

Can you clarify the potential for;

1) is there correlation with endothelial glycocalyx regulation and alterations/shedding? Endothelial glycocalyx now well recognized as a key component of angiogenesis and shedding/dysfunction/inflammation in venous hypertension

2) is there any correlation with lymphangiogenesis/lymphatic dysfunction; VEGF-C noted in your identification; venous disease associated with C3 and beyond for venous insufficiency - 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Content suggestions:

1.         There is relatively high percent match 45%. Further negative is the use of lower number of controls than the patients included in the study.

2.         For the completeness, I would like to kindly ask the Authors to add information about family history, drug history and gynecological history of the patients.

I sincerely appreciate the effort of the Authors to perform such an important study, as varicose veins are the significant risk factor of life-threatening venous thromboembolism. The manuscript is written on a high scientific level with the use of sophisticated statistical methods and illustration of the results in several figures and tables.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf