Submited on: 11 Jun 2012 02:20:37 PM GMT
Published on: 13 Jun 2012 01:47:30 PM GMT
 

  • What are the main claims of the paper and how important are they?

    This paper claims that children with atopy have early onset and severe wheeze with household tobacco smoke exposure. This is an important claim particurarly for the genral practice/family physician population.


  • Are these claims novel? If not, please specify papers that weaken the claims to the originality of this one.

    Claims appear to be novel, however there are other published paper that elude to this association. 


  • Are the claims properly placed in the context of the previous literature?

    Yes


  • Do the results support the claims? If not, what other evidence is required?

    Although the study proposes as association, the study design comparisons appear somewhat odd.  The authors compared the severity of wheeze in tobacco-exposed wheezing children from atopic families with that in non-tobacco-exposed children from non-atopic families, as well as with tobacco-exposed children from non-atopic families. However, there was no comparison between tobacco-exposed children from atopic families to those children with non-tobacco-exposed from atopic families. The results of this comparison would be more applicable and have greater implication in primary care.  


  • If a protocol is provided, for example for a randomized controlled trial, are there any important deviations from it? If so, have the authors explained adequately why the deviations occurred?

    This was a prospective descript study not an RCT.


  • Is the methodology valid? Does the paper offer enough details of its methodology that its experiments or its analyses could be reproduced?

    Yes


  • Would any other experiments or additional information improve the paper? How much better would the paper be if this extra work was done, and how difficult would such work be to do, or to provide?

    Comparison as mentioned above.


  • Is this paper outstanding in its discipline? (For example, would you like to see this work presented in a seminar at your hospital or university? Do you feel these results need to be incorporated in your next general lecture on the subject?) If yes, what makes it outstanding? If not, why not?

    No, the group comparisons don't appear to be complete and full, as the obvious comparison (As stated above) in missing.


  • Other Comments:

    Article, requires grammar and spleeing corrections throughout. Not sure what is meant by non-passive smokers and its appears intuitively incorrect to refer to children as passive smokers. Perhaps exposed (to tobacco smoke) and not-exposed (to tobacco smoke) would be better terms to use in the manuscript.

  • Competing interests:
    No, competing interests to declare
  • Invited by the author to review this article? :
    No
  • Have you previously published on this or a similar topic?:
    No
  • References:
  • Experience and credentials in the specific area of science:

    Primary and secondary care interface

  • How to cite:  Ram F S.Imapct Of Household Tobacco Smoke Expsoure On Childhood Wheezing. [Review of the article 'Imapct of Household Tobacco Smoke Expsoure on Childhood Wheezing. ' by Shahid S].WebmedCentral 2012;3(8):WMCRW002174
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Dear Felix S Ram, Thank you so much for sparing time for reviewing my article. The points are well taken and the suggestions would be incorporated in my revised version of this article. Best regards, Dr. Shahid
Responded by Dr. Sukhbir Shahid on 09 Aug 2012 05:35:16 AM

  • What are the main claims of the paper and how important are they?

    The paper tried to prove objectively that:

    household passive smoking increases the risk of childhood wheezing via a prospective descriptive study.

     

    This is important as it can discourage parents or family members from smoking in the house when they have genetically susceptible children or siblings.


  • Are these claims novel? If not, please specify papers that weaken the claims to the originality of this one.

    Yes


  • Are the claims properly placed in the context of the previous literature?

    Yes


  • Do the results support the claims? If not, what other evidence is required?

    The results of the study confimed the claims.


  • If a protocol is provided, for example for a randomized controlled trial, are there any important deviations from it? If so, have the authors explained adequately why the deviations occurred?

    This was an observational study.


  • Is the methodology valid? Does the paper offer enough details of its methodology that its experiments or its analyses could be reproduced?

    Yes, quite detailed


  • Would any other experiments or additional information improve the paper? How much better would the paper be if this extra work was done, and how difficult would such work be to do, or to provide?

    Additional information would improve the paper such as spirometry, serum immunoglobulin E and skin prick test. Not that difficult to do this work.


  • Is this paper outstanding in its discipline? (For example, would you like to see this work presented in a seminar at your hospital or university? Do you feel these results need to be incorporated in your next general lecture on the subject?) If yes, what makes it outstanding? If not, why not?

    Not a great paper to me as I was hoping to see the impact of intervention which was absent.


  • Other Comments:

    A few spelling errors. What does "prepond" mean?

  • Competing interests:
    No
  • Invited by the author to review this article? :
    No
  • Have you previously published on this or a similar topic?:
    No
  • References:
    None
  • Experience and credentials in the specific area of science:

    Have some knowledge

  • How to cite:  Abdul Rahaman J .Impact of Household passive Smoking on Childhood Wheezing [Review of the article 'Imapct of Household Tobacco Smoke Expsoure on Childhood Wheezing. ' by Shahid S].WebmedCentral 2012;3(6):WMCRW001960
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Dear Dr. Jamalul Azizi, Thank u so much for sparing time to review my article. The suggestions are well taken and shall be incorporated in the revised version of this article. tq Best rgds dr. shahid
Responded by Dr. Sukhbir Shahid on 24 Jun 2012 06:36:37 AM