Effects of Coping Strategies on Health-Related Quality of Life of People with Neuromuscular Diseases

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is an important paper because it is a important topic in neuromuscular patients treatment.

This research proved what we subjectively thought.

Author Response

RESPONSE: We thank the reviewer for the comments.

Reviewer 2 Report

Please find my comments below:

1. please better describe the novel of the presented study in the introduction section.

2. please add to the statistical analysis "sample size calculation" - mandatory

3. please divide the results section into sub-sections with descriptive titles.

4. please put the number of cases in the abstract.

Author Response

• Please better describe the novel of the presented study in the introduction section.

RESPONSE: As suggested by the reviewer, it has been added a better description of the novel of the present study (Lines 86-88).

• Please add to the statistical analysis "sample size calculation" – mandatory

RESPONSE: Considering that NMD are rare diseases and consequently the sample recruitment was by convenience, no sample size calculation was made. We are aware that this is a limitation of the study, and because of that, a sentence about this has been included in limitations section (Lines 301-302). However, in order to perform this calculation, it is necessary to have the incidence data for these pathologies, which is not available currently for the Spanish territory.

• Please divide the results section into sub-sections with descriptive titles.

RESPONSE: As suggested by the reviewer, the results section has been divided into sub-sections (Pages 5-7).

• Please put the number of cases in the abstract.

RESPONSE: We appreciate the suggestion, but the number of cases (n= 61) is already presented in the abstract (Line 18).

Reviewer 3 Report

Manuscript ID.:  Muscles-2802805
Title:     Effects of coping strategies on health-related quality of life of people with neuromuscular diseases

The research article is informative. Authors needs to address the comments before acceptance are as follows;

Line 24; Authors specifies only social support as it got higher significance but still author needs to broaden the importance of venting, disengagement, etc. will impact in the patients HRQoL.

Line 112; Instrument used such as disability, HRQoL and Coping strategies is good criteria. Also, Author needs to brief WHO-DAS II Questionnaire, SIP-Sp-36, cope-60 more suitable for this study then other and justify the best among the other questionnaire like QBPDS/ ODI/ RMDQ, etc.

Line 189-206; Authors requested to describe the physical SIP score and their correlation in table form. And required to describe the impact of this observation for each result outcome individually.

Authors needs to add more recent relevant references, where the older references cited.

Author Response

• Line 24; Authors specifies only social support as it got higher significance but still author needs to broaden the importance of venting, disengagement, etc. will impact in the patients HRQoL.

RESPONSE: As this is an abstract, we wanted to highlight the most relevant findings in terms of statistical power and it was the only indicator that explains a better psychosocial HRQoL (according to regression model). The rest of the components, however, have been analyzed and discussed in the discussion section (Lines 267-283).

• Line 112; Instrument used such as disability, HRQoL and Coping strategies is good criteria. Also, Author needs to brief WHO-DAS II Questionnaire, SIP-Sp-36, cope-60 more suitable for this study then other and justify the best among the other questionnaire like QBPDS/ ODI/ RMDQ, etc.

RESPONSE: An explanatory paragraph has been added on the justification of why these instruments have been used and their validity in this population, based on previous recent articles (Lines 115-119).

• Line 189-206; Authors requested to describe the physical SIP score and their correlation in table form. And required to describe the impact of this observation for each result outcome individually.

RESPONSE: All the information related to correlations between variables are expressed in the text. That is why we do not consider to include this data again in a table in order to avoid repetitive information.

In relation to the second suggestion, we have added a paragraph explaining this result in the discussion section (Lines 268-272).

• Authors needs to add more recent relevant references, where the older references cited.

RESPONSE: More recent relevant references have been added along the manuscript. However, there are certain old references that have to be included regarding their relevance in this field (e.g. Folkman and Lazarus).