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Missing legends and background information

Posted by eliesbik on 19 Nov 2013 at 22:57 GMT

This paper adds to a growing amount of data that our microbiotas are associated with our health. It is great to see more and more studies showing the presence of bacteria (or bacterial DNA) in newborns' meconium samples. This paper suggests that the health of the mother could indirectly affect the health of her baby through bacterial communities, possibly even before birth.

However, there are a couple of important parameters that I missed in this paper.

First, the inclusion of the "subclinical diabetes" mothers into the healthy controls (HCs) might have diluted the differences between the HCs and the DM groups. It is not always clear in the figures and analyses when the subclinical mothers were included with the HCs. The paper could have made a stronger point if these women, who were borderline at risk for developing GDM, would not have been grouped together with the HCs.

Second, the authors do not report on any medications that were taken by any of these mothers. Were the mothers in the DM and GDM groups taking any medications or following a special diet? Could medications (or e.g. low carb diet) by itself be responsible for the differences in microbiota?

Third, did the authors try to correlate microbial communities with glucose levels? That parameter might have been a stronger driver for microbial composition than diagnosis. Although there is hardly any data on glucose levels in the DM women, the GDM and subclinical mothers had a much higher average glucose level than the healthy mothers.

Fourth, some labeling of the figures appears missing. Most importantly, I don't see a legend explaining the different colors in Figure 1C. Which line corresponds to what sample group? In Figures 2 and 4, are the meconium samples shown in the same order as in Figure 1?

No competing interests declared.
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