The Microbiota and the Relationship with Colorectal Cancer: Surgical Complications—A Review

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

In this manuscript, the authors explored the relationship between gut microbiota and complications after surgery in patients with colorectal cancer. Microbial profiles in anastomotic leakage, infection complication, postoperative ileus, postoperative adhesion, and malignant transformation. Overall, the review summarizes the correlation of gut microbiota profile in these complications. Some suggestions for the authors.

Lines 92-94 should be merged into the following paragraph after surgical complication was discussed.

It will be nice to summarize the underlying mechanism of why the population of gut microbiota is altered with surgical therapy.

Abbreviations should be used for the first time shown in the manuscript, such as IL-12 (line 255), IL-6 has been mentioned in line 217, some of them do not have it, such as PD-1 and ECM, etc.

Line 137, colo-rectal > colorectal.

Bacterial names, all the bacterial family, genera, and species should be italic, while bacterial phyla are not needed.

In the context, et al., et al,, or et al should be consistent.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thank you for the valuable feedback. We took each point of your suggestions and made the according changes:

• line 92-94 where deleted and we made the corresponding changes in the paragraph describing serotonin role in surgical complications;
• We verified abbreviations and added the terms on their first occurrence
• Colo-rectal was changed into Colorectal;
• Phyla were changed to normal type instead of italic.

Thank you for your time and effort!

Reviewer 2 Report

This is a review of the associations of gut microbiota with colorectal cancer surgical complications. I think the topic is relevant, considering the increasing interest in the role of bacteria in both health and disease, including cancer pathogenesis. The authors seem to have done a good job in citing the most relevant publications. The review is definitely useful for those looking for easily accessible information on the topic.

Although the text if fine by itself, too, it could also be useful to include a figure summarizing the main concepts presented in the review.

I also have a few minor suggestions as follows:

1. The citation [2] was written by Hanahan, not "Weinberg and Hanahan".
2. Please check the punctuation in this sentence: "It is possible that bacteria from the gut microbiome might be used as biomarkers for CRC detection especially Fusobacterium nucleatum, Peptostreoptococcus stomatis, Parvimonas mica, and Solobacterium moorei. Peptostreptococcus anaerobius. [22–25]" (lines 82-83)
3. The sentence on lines 253-254 ("In the study on mice by Pohl et al. they described a connection between 253 CD103+CD11b+ and microbiota which might regulate postoperative ileus") seems to be missing the word "cells" after "CD103+CD11b+".
4. In Table 1, the significance of "Negative" and "Positive" is a bit ambiguous. Please elaborate. Does "Positive" mean that these bacteria could prevent the complication?

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thank you for your valuable feedback! As per your suggestions we made the following changes:

• deleted name Weinberg as in the last review since Hanahan participated
• We changed the punctuation
• We added the term "cells"
• We have written in the table description what negative/positive impact means. 

Thank you very much for your time and effort!

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript has been revised according to the reviewer's suggestion. No additional comments. Thank you.

Reviewer 2 Report

I think the authors have adequately addressed the comments.