Treatment of Chronic Hepatitis D with Bulevirtide—A Fight against Two Foes—An Update

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is a well written relevant review at the time of HBV and HDV cure giving a sound understanding of the use of Bulevertide. My only point would be to include a small section regarding expected changes in the liver (speculation) with this drug.

Author Response

Sorry at the moment there are no data. Wedemaywr has shown a decline in HDV-Ag in the liver, we have shown some changes in hemodynamic parameters

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper focus on treatment options fo HDV at present and (hopefully) in the next future. The paper is well written and the theme is very actual. 

Major comment:  

-paragraph "role of chronic hepatitis B" could be implemented:  do you suggest qHBsAg testing during treatment with BLV? are there some data on qHBsAg and HDV during treatment with pegIFN? 

Minor comments: 

-references:

--please check lines 27-28 as there are some references with different styles and I'm not sure citations  in brackets to which reference they correspond. 

--line 36-38 : add citation

--lines 119-120: check citation

-typo errors: there are some typo errors, i.e. lines 33, 63-65, 86-87, 88, 113-114

Author Response

paragraph "role of chronic hepatitis B" could be implemented:  do you suggest qHBsAg testing during treatment with BLV? are there some data on qHBsAg and HDV during treatment with pegIFN?

This is already delt with in the original text:

Decline in qHBsAg may herald HBV cure within the next years (xxxvi). In 180
our study, HBsAg levels did not change during BLV monotherapy, but fell in 2 patients with PEGIFN add-on qHBsAg by 44 and112 %, respectively, after starting PEGINF. Larger decreases (<1log) in qHBsAg may be a favorable prognostic sign....

References were correct in the wordfile, in PDF some ref. # were changed to roman numbers Please keep our numbering

typos - as far as I found the, corrected