Phytonutrient and Nutraceutical Action against COVID-19: Current Review of Characteristics and Benefits
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Now, the detection or development of specific medicine for SARS-Cov-2 is very important. Under the situation where there is no silver bullet for SARS-Cov-2, the related information of the silver bullet to cure of COVID-19.
This review is very beneficial for development of specific medicine for SARS-Cov-2.
However, the following points would be considered to improve this article.
Major points
It is always a problem that these active ingredients are potent when we take them from the diet. Author should describe about the relation each content in vegetables, fruits and so on and effective amount for SARS-Cov-2 and/or COVID-19, if it is possible.
Minor points
1) Table 1
All contents are centered vertically in Table 1.
Because of that, the each paragraph has a ragged left margin.
Each paragraph should be left-justified.
2) Reviewer received this article as a pdf file. So, character font should not be changed.
However, character font in some lines has changed.
Ex)
line 29 – 33 [The term ----- in plants.]
A parts of line34 [are often used interchangeably]
line 37 [the word “nutraceutical” becomes bold face]
line 90 – 91 [severe acute ------ coronavirus]
line 92 – 94 [many herbal extracts ------ celery]
Author Response
Dear reviewer:
thank you very much for your comments and time. It has been very useful. For your easy checking, you can find a document in which your points have been answer one by one.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
This manuscript is addressing the very interesting topic of potential effects of phytonutrients and nutraceuticals on Covid-19 infection and disease. The authors are carefully describing the characteristics of 5 bioactive compounds derived from food, including known interactions with cellular and viral proteins and the human host immune system. The review of current literature with appropriate references appear to be complete presenting a good overview of in vivo and in vitro studies with sufficient references.
The title and abstract promise an understanding of how these five bioactive compounds could be used in preventing Covid-19 infection or disease progression. Unfortunately, the current manuscript is not providing further insights in these topics which would have been the highlight of the paper. I suggest the authors focus more on clear clinical evidence and include the doses of each compound that were found to have anti-Covid effects. The doses or concentrations of the bioactive compounds are missing from the manuscript and to include these would be essential to be able to infer any benefits in regard to virus infection. It is well known that these dietary compounds usually need to be administered at high doses that cannot be achieved from normal food intake.
Other suggestions:
- It would be helpful to include figures for example structures of the bioactive compounds to help understanding how they act in humans/viruses.
- Starting on line 130 the authors state that curcumoin inhibits the HIV, Zika, Chikungunya viruse proteases and integrases and concludes this also is true for Covid-19. However, they do not explain why this would be the same for example, do these enzymes have the same specificity/structure in Covid-19? please explain
- Line 159: the sentence starting 'They reported.....' does not make sense. Please complete sentence.
- Line 169: the snetence starting 'In another recent Chinese study...' does not make sense. Please explain the 'similar docking activity'
- Please review and edit language to make arguments more clear.
Author Response
Thank you very much for the useful questions and time dedicated. Please, find the responses in the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Thanks for taking the time to edit the manuscript and respond to comments. This version is much improved.
