Investigation on Anthrax in Bangladesh during the Outbreaks of 2011 and Definition of the Epidemiological Correlations
, Viviana Manzulli 1,*, Luigina Serrecchia 1, Pietro Di Taranto 2, Martin Hugh-Jones 3, M. Jahangir Hossain 4,5, Valeria Rondinone 1, Dora Cipolletta 1, Lorenzo Pace 1, Michela Iatarola 1, Francesco Tolve 1, Angela Aceti 1, Elena Poppa 1 and Antonio Fasanella 1Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
I read the manuscript entitled "Investigation on Anthrax in Bangladesh During the Outbreaks of 2011 and Definition of the Epidemiological Correlations" with sincere pleasure.
Nevertheless, I have to make a few remarks.
My main note concerns table 2. It is really badly formatted, and the data is presented in a very inconvenient way. The numbers in a cells do not fit on one line, and they are transferred to the next line at the cell border. It can create some difficulties for data perception and for understanding.
I'm not sure if this comment can be addressed to the authors. Maybe this formatting occurred during the automatic creation of a PDF document. But in the version for publication this table should be reformatted.
I also have a few minor comments:
Line 97 "The other two are novel genotypes labeled as GT_5 / Ban and GT_6 / Ban"
Maybe it would be better to clarify whether these MLVA genotypes were new specifically for Bangladesh, or are we talking about unique genotypes that were not previously identified anywhere?
Line 133 "13 new subgenotypes were found"
similar to the previous remark
Lines 153-155 "in previous studies, it was clear that anthrax transmission could not be linked to the food, because feed samples resulted negative to B. anthracis"
The cited article states only "The negative results of bone meal samples probably nullify the hypothesis of anthrax transmission through the imported cattle feed supplement", but livestock feed is not only bone meal. Therefore, this phrase seems to me not quite correctly formulated.
I would also like to make a general comment - a person who is not familiar with the geography of Bangladesh may have some difficulties when reading the article. It is not entirely clear whether the described districts border each other or they are distant from each other. Maybe there is an opportunity to illustrate the text with a map on which the described regions and the distribution of the detected genotypes in these regions would be indicated?
Author Response
Dear reviewer, thank you for revising our manuscript and for your precious comments. Here are reported the requested revisions.
Best regards
Viviana Manzulli
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear authors,
after reviewing your manuscript "Investigation on Anthrax in Bangladesh During the Outbreaks of 2011 and Definition of the Epidemiological Correlations", revisions are advised:
Line 21: Place comma after "2011"
Line 21: write six instead of 6
Line 22: write six instead of 6
Line 28: "of which two" instead "two of which"
Line 30: comma after "power"
Line 32: "the only responsible" - do you mean "the only reason"?
Line 46: "accounted" instead "were"
Line 46: place "respectively" after "607,"
Line 50: place comma after "soil" instead before
Line 67: write "two" instead of "2"
Line 91: place comma after "001/002"
Line 123: Table 2 appears confusing. Please depict it in a clearly-arranged form. Also point out what the upper and lower numbers stand for.
Line 132: add "it" after "because"
Line 136: change the sentence to "All the genotypes identified in this study were detected in samples fprm Rajhashi Division."
Line 137: replace "above all for what concerns" by "concerning the"
Line 141: replace "were" by "where"
Line 144: add "when" after "occurs"
Line 147-150: redundant use of "contaminated"
Line 159: replace "are used harmful feeds" by "harmful feeds are used"
Line 168: add "by" after "In fact",
Line 168: replace "surprisingly emerged" by "was surprising"
Line 182: replace "responsible" by "reason"
Line 184: delete comma
Line 192: add city to the Anthrax Reference Institute in Italy
Line 230: delete one of the two "in"
Line 237-238: compared with which software or methods?
Line 249: Add "The" before "MLVA"
Line 253: replace ":" by comma after vrrC2
Lien 272: This sentence doesn't make any sense
Line 289: comma after "analyses"
Author Response
Dear reviewer, thank you for revising our manuscript and for your precious comments. Here are reported the requested revisions.
Best regards
Viviana Manzulli
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
