Role of Nutribiotics in Skin Care
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThank you for providing me with the opportunity to review the manuscript "Role of nutribiotics in skin care".
This is a very comprehensive review article evaluating several aspects of various types of nutribiotics used. The authors elaborated all the benefits of nutribiotics in skin care and treatment of pathologic skin conditions. The approach to evaluation of human skin mikrobiota from different aspects is especially significant in making this manuscript so important to understanding the variations of human skin microbiome. It describes the influence of environmental factors and individual characteristics on human skin microbiome composition.
However, there are certain minor points which could be addressed in order to improve the overall appearance and completeness of the topic.
- Line 121 - There are two prefixes "pre". Please correct one of them to "pro".
- Lines 142-144 - Please consider describing the use of multiomics a little bit further.
- Line 155 - Please consider removing the article "the" before health.
- Line 157 - Please consider removing the article "the" before "defense" and "interrelation".
- Adding types of probiotics other than bacterial (besides phage therapy mentioned in the Lines 934-940) would be beneficial.
- Line 999 - Please elaborate the sentence "Prebiotics seem also to be useful for preventing aging.". If the paragraph starting at the Line 999 is related to the paragraph starting at the Line 1003 dealing with gerobiotics, then merge those two into one paragraph.
- Consider describing briefly the influence of food and medications on human microbiome.
- In order to keep the adequate balance of benefits and risks, downsides and risks of use of nutribiotics mentioned in the Lines 1127-1130 should be more explained.
After adressing these points and paraphrasing certain segments of the manuscript in order to reduce the similarity percent, will certainly improve the overall quality of the manuscript.
Other than these suggestions, my opinion is that no further improvements are needed.
Author Response
REPLY
Dear reviewer,
Firstly, we would like to thank the reviewer for the valuable contribution which helped us to importantly improve the paper. We have tried to address all the concerns exposed and incorporated them into the current version of the manuscript. Please find here specific references to the text to facilitate their revision:
- Line 121 - There are two prefixes "pre". Please correct one of them to "pro".
- Lines 142-144 - Please consider describing the use of multiomics a little bit further.
- Line 155 - Please consider removing the article "the" before health.
- Line 157 - Please consider removing the article "the" before "defense" and "interrelation".
All the improvements suggested in the previous points have been made.
- Adding types of probiotics other than bacterial (besides phage therapy mentioned in the Lines 934-940) would be beneficial.
Yeast is also included: Saccharomyces cerevisiae (see paragraphs 910-921)
- Line 999 - Please elaborate the sentence "Prebiotics seem also to be useful for preventing aging.". If the paragraph starting at the Line 999 is related to the paragraph starting at the Line 1003 dealing with gerobiotics, then merge those two into one paragraph.
The line 999 is related to prebiotics, while 1003 refers specifically to probiotics.
- Consider describing briefly the influence of food and medications on human microbiome.
Related to diet and skin microbiome references mentioned in Section 3 are 60 (Maruvada et al. 2017) and 73 (Celebi Sozener et al. 2022).
- In order to keep the adequate balance of benefits and risks, downsides and risks of use of nutribiotics mentioned in the Lines 1127-1130 should be more explained.
Done
After adressing these points and paraphrasing certain segments of the manuscript in order to reduce the similarity percent, will certainly improve the overall quality of the manuscript.
Done
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsA review article titled "Role of nutribiotics in skin care" by the Mourelle group for publication in Applied Sciences. The article discusses recent literature on skin microbiome and skin diseases. This is an interesting and well-compiled article and would be of great interest to the readers of the Applied Sciences. However, the following queries need to be addressed before publishing this manuscript:
1. The manuscript is too lengthy (wordy) and could be presented briefly.
2. The conclusion can be elaborated or summarized well it is too short.
Overall, this review is intriguing, and I recommend publishing it after minor revisions.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.docx
Author Response
REPLY
Dear reviewer,
Firstly, we would like to thank the reviewer for the valuable contribution which helped us to importantly improve the paper. We have tried to address all the concerns exposed and incorporated them into the current version of the manuscript. Please find here specific references to the text to facilitate their revision:
- The manuscript is too lengthy (wordy) and could be presented briefly.
The authors agree with the comment, but given the amount of information available on this matter, it is practically impossible to reduce the length of the text.
- The conclusion can be elaborated or summarized well it is too short.
The conclusion has been enlarged.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsLourdes Mourelle et al. present a comprehensive review of the skin microbiota and the potential of nutribiotics in addressing current skin disease challenges.
The review is extensive and covers a lot of grounds, is overall well structured and clear. I only have some suggestions for the authors, in particular I feel like the figures could be imporved in order to be more informative to the readers.
- Introduction: The term of "Nutraceuticals" is not defined in the introduction, and the term of "Nutribiotics" is only defined at the very end. I feel like these terms should be defined along with pre/pro/post biotics terms, in particular since they are also in the title of the review.
- Figure 2: It is unclear where the data presented in the figure comes from, are the proportions presented in read counts? Genome counts? Cell counts? Additionally, the current figure is really close to the one from Belkaid et al, aside from some color changes. The yellow and green colors for the body sites type are difficult to distinguish and the image.
- Figure 3: The legend is very incomplete and does not provide enough information about the figure is globally not really informative. I would suggest to the author to add to the figure the information about the impact of these exposures and variables on the alpha-diversity of the skin microbiota.
- Section 4 (Skin microbiome and dermatological disorders): This section is really long and the structure is not optimal since the section 5 repeats part of it. Since the central point of the review is the use of nutribiotics on the skin microbiota, I would suggest the author to revise the structure of these two paragraph dividing them by disease. For each disease, the authors can introduce the disease and microbiota associated and link these to the potential effects of probiotics. This would help link the two information that are currently separated in different paragraphs. In this proposed structure, the tables 1 and 2 would have a better use as they would allow the reader to quickly recapitulate and contrast the diseases.
Minor corrections and typos:
- L86: You are presenting here only human viruses, please include bacteriophages in that paragraph
- L225: replace "senile" by "ederly population" as senile has a negative connotation
- Accross the manuscript there is an inconsistent use of Italics for taxa names.
- L558: the sentence is incomplete
- L545-579: The authors could add few words to include probiotics applied locally on the skin and contrast them with probiotics taken orally.
Author Response
REPLY
Dear reviewer,
Firstly, we would like to thank the reviewer for the valuable contribution which helped us to importantly improve the paper. We have tried to address all the concerns exposed and incorporated them into the current version of the manuscript. Please find here specific references to the text to facilitate their revision:
- Introduction: The term of "Nutraceuticals" is not defined in the introduction, and the term of "Nutribiotics" is only defined at the very end. I feel like these terms should be defined along with pre/pro/post biotics terms, in particular since they are also in the title of the review.
An explanation about Nutribiotics has been added in the Introduction. Nutraceuticals are defined in line 58.
- Figure 2: It is unclear where the data presented in the figure comes from, are the proportions presented in read counts? Genome counts? Cell counts? Additionally, the current figure is really close to the one from Belkaid et al, aside from some color changes. The yellow and green colors for the body sites type are difficult to distinguish and the image.
Figure 2 has been adapted from Belkaid and Segre, 2014, as mentioned in the caption of the figure. Pie charts represent the consensus relative abundance of the different categories: kingdom, bacteria, and fungi. For bacteria and fungi, major taxa colors are identified in the legend. Relative proportions of minor taxa are colored to represent the relative proportion.
- Figure 3: The legend is very incomplete and does not provide enough information about the figure is globally not really informative. I would suggest to the author to add to the figure the information about the impact of these exposures and variables on the alpha-diversity of the skin microbiota.
The figure is merely illustrative. The information regarding the influence of intrinsic and extrinsic factors is described in the paragraphs preceding it.
- Section 4 (Skin microbiome and dermatological disorders): This section is really long and the structure is not optimal since the section 5 repeats part of it. Since the central point of the review is the use of nutribiotics on the skin microbiota, I would suggest the author to revise the structure of these two paragraph dividing them by disease. For each disease, the authors can introduce the disease and microbiota associated and link these to the potential effects of probiotics. This would help link the two information that are currently separated in different paragraphs. In this proposed structure, the tables 1 and 2 would have a better use as they would allow the reader to quickly recapitulate and contrast the diseases.
The reason why both descriptions have been separated is that we consider that it would be interesting to describe, first of all, how the skin (and intestinal) microbiome affects skin diseases and, in the next section, describe the nutribiotics that may be useful in the treatment of these disorders.
Minor corrections and typos:
- L86: You are presenting here only human viruses, please include bacteriophages in that paragraph
We supposed that there was a mistake with the number of the line (as there are no mentions related to viruses in line 86). Information about bacteriophages is included in the line 934.
- L225: replace "senile" by "ederly population" as senile has a negative connotation
Done
- Accross the manuscript there is an inconsistent use of Italics for taxa names.
Italics for taxa names have been revised.
- L558: the sentence is incomplete.
The sentence has been rewrite.
- L545-579: The authors could add few words to include probiotics applied locally on the skin and contrast them with probiotics taken orally.
Done.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
