Effects of Cheonwangbosim-dan in a Mouse Model of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease: Anti-Inflammatory and Anti-Fibrotic Therapy

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Review comment
This is an interesting paper where the authors looked at the beneficial effects a composite herb, CBD in the treatment of obstructive pulmonary diseases. The work is quite innovative, trying to validate the use of CBD in Asian trado-medicine. However, a few corrections are necessary to make the work better.
Abstract
Line 18- instead of “dramatically” use “significantly”
Line 20- you should indicate the p value or confidence interval to make the result presentation more scientific and authentic
Introduction
Line 36- instead of “main danger element”, use “main risk factor”
Line 45- use “are” instead of “were” since you are not reporting your own result.
Line 66- instead of “hypotensives” use “antihypertensives”
Line 68- the word “affection” as used here is not clear
Line 81-84- You can paraphrase this as “The present study evaluated the implications of CBD in a mouse model of COPD induced by CS and LPS, finding that CBD can prevent the inflammatory processes and airway remodeling characteristic of lungs in this model of 83 COPD” use
“The present study evaluated the implications of CBD in COPD induced by CS and LPS in a mouse model, to find if CBD can prevent the inflammatory processes and airway remodelling characteristic of lungs in this model of COPD”
Methods
Line 88- “research begins” should be “research began”
Line 106- The first sentence is complicated for ordinary readers. Break it down to a simpler and understandable format.
Line 115- Give more details about this method for BALF IL-6 and TNF-α Measurements. Not all readers have access to the manufacturer’s instruction.
Line 123- Instead of “investigation into histopathology” use only “Histopathology of the lungs”
Line 134-146- Present the primers in a tabular form as follows
Gene ID
RNA Primer
Forward
Reverse
Results
Line 183-184- How did you measure the reduction in exudative alterations? That should be indicated
Line 186- No reference was made to Figure 1A and C in your writing. It should be used or cited somewhere or it should be removed from the Figure 1 panel. All figures must be cited.
Line 198-99- Indicate if the attenuation was significant or not, possibly include the p value
Line 213-214- You need to indicate the values to show the levels of reduction and also indicate the p values of these values to show their differences. Do same for other results presented. This is because figures do not show exact values and could be misleading
.Discussion
Line 283- instead of alike use “comparable”
CBD contains about 15 herbs. If this is the case, it means that it has phytochemical constituents like alkaloids, flavonoids etc. To justify the benefits of CBD, it will be very important to discuss its phytochemical constituents and their probable roles in ameliorating the conditions induced by CS and LPS.
Conclusion
The conclusion will be stronger if the discussion is done with references to the phytochemical composition of CBD
General comment
The authors partly discussed the results under result section. This is not proper. To avoid this temptation of discussing the results in the result section, I suggest the authors merge the results and discussion in one section.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Reviewer 2 Report

In this paper, Kang et al. explored the effects of cheonwangbosim-dan in a mouse model of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Their study discovered that CBD prevented against COPD induced by  LPS and CS in mice via lowering inflammatory response and airway remodeling. The capacity of CBD to inhibit the MAPKs and NF-κB pathways may be responsible for these effects. This study is interesting and important. However, the mechianism of the drug is not well explained, and more molecular experiments (such as proteomics and metabolomics) need to be supplemented before publication in Cells.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

I can understand that the authors are unable to provide supplementary experiments in the limited time. Looking forward to the release of follow-up research results.