3. 我的回信
Dear Dr. Massimo Gion:
On behalf of my co-authors, we thank you very much for giving us an opportunity to revise our manuscript, we appreciate reviewers very much for their positive and constructive comments and suggestions on our manuscript entitled “题目”.
We have revised the manuscript which marked in red in the paper, according to the comments and suggestions of reviewers, and responded, point by point to, the comments as listed below.
We would like to re-submit this revised manuscript to 杂志名, and hope it is acceptable for publication in the journal. Looking forward to hearing from you soon.
With kindest regards,
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下面是最重要的内容,要提炼审稿人提出的问题,一个个加以回答,千万不要漏,如果有跟审稿意见有冲突千万不要回避委婉的说明事实及困难即可。
Response to reviewer 1:
1. Response to comment:The paper was written in unsatisfactory English.
Response: We are ashamed for our unsatisfactory English and thank you very much for your cautious correction. We spent a lot of time, after we received your email, working through the paper and made some small changes marked in red in the paper to improve the English expression.Because the minor modifications are so many that we do not enumerate them.
2. Response to comment:The paper submitted has the drawback of excluding healthy female subjects from evaluation.
Response: Our data was derived from the Fangchenggang Area Male Healthy and Examination Survey (FAMHES) which was designed to investigate the effects of environmental and genetic factors and their interaction on the development of age-related chronic disease. But female subjects were not investigated in the project. It's a pity that our reference interval study is lack of female subjects. However, the lack of female gender investigation, as the reviewer said, is partially compensated by the fact that other authors of large and recent studies have not found a gender-related difference for AFP and CEA.
3. Response to comment:Beneath other factors the difference in ethnic samples and determination methods as discussed by the authors may be a main reason.
Response: The reference interval study was performed in accordance with standard operating procedures and the operational errors should be minor. Therefore the discrepancy in the results of reference interval studies is mainly due to the differences in subjects and diversities of measurements.
4. Response to comment:Therefore it would have been helpful, if the authors had investigated this question by log-transformation of the AFP and CEA values and testing for normality by the Kolmogorov-Smirnov-test.
Response: After log-transformation, the results of the Kolmogorov-Smirnov-test showed thatthe distribution of AFP and CEA, as you have said, conformed to a Gaussian distribution with Z=1.138 (P=0.150) and Z=0.901 (P=0.391), respectively. The parametric reference intervalswere then calculated. The content about this topic has been added in line 8, page 2, line 16, page 6, line 3, page 7 and line 3, page 9. The table II and III have also been edited. Moreover, histogram of log-AFP and log-CEA values has been added to figure 1.
5. Response to comment:Table I-III: the abbreviations of M (mean?, median?), R (range?), Q(?)R and RI should be indicated in the heading of tables.
Response: We are sorry for forgetting to interpret the abbreviations of M, R, QR and RI in the heading of tables and this oversight has been corrected.
Response to reviewer 2:
Response to comment:The relevance of this work in the clinical practice is very poor. The knowledge of precise concentrations of tumor markers in normal healthy adult for cancer screening and diagnosis is useless.
Response: Tumor marker tests are not used alone to detect and diagnose cancer because most tumor markers can be elevated in patients who don't have a tumor. Although tumor markers are typically imperfect as screening tests to detect hidden cancers, once a particular tumor has been found with a marker, the marker may be a marvel as a means of monitoring the success (or failure) of treatment. The tumor marker level may also reflect the extent (the stage) of the disease, indicate how quickly the cancer is likely to progress and so help determine the prognosis. The acquaintance of whether the level of serum tumor maker is abnormal is based on cut-off level. Moreover, the current research about reference intervals for serum AFP and CEA is the first published report regarding Chinese populations. Therefore, this study is of great significance.
I have rewrite “Assessment of the clinical value of serum tumor markersrequires knowledge about their precise concentrations in normal healthy adults” to “The knowledge about the cut-off level of tumor markers may help distinguish between benign and malignant disease” (line 6, page 3).
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