Talk:WikiJournal Preprints/Inflammatory response in Plasmodium infected patients treated using raw liquid extract of Morinda lucida (Oowo) leaf in some traditional homes in Nigeria
This article is an unpublished pre-print undergoing public peer review organised by the WikiJournal of Medicine.
You can follow its progress through the peer review process at this tracking page.First submitted:
Article text
QID: Q107354000
Suggested (provisional) preprint citation format:
Mathew Folaranmi Olaniyan; Tolulope Busayo Olaniyan. "Inflammatory response in Plasmodium infected patients treated using raw liquid extract of Morinda lucida (Oowo) leaf in some traditional homes in Nigeria". WikiJournal Preprints. Wikidata Q107354000.
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This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction, provided the original author and source are credited.
Melanie Stefan 
(handling editor) contact
Netha Hussain contact
Akshay S Dinesh
Article information
This is the pre-publication public peer review for the article Inflammatory response in Plasmodium infected patients treated using raw liquid extract of Morinda lucida (Oowo) leaf in some traditional homes in Nigeria
Plagiarism check[edit source]
Pass. Report from Copyvios tool [1] 5/7% 'violation unlikely' Rwatson1955 (discuss • contribs) 11:13, 2 November 2022 (UTC)
Review 1[edit source]
Review by Akshay S Dinesh 
, SOCHARA
These assessment comments were submitted on , and refer to this previous version of the article
This study from the district of Saki in Nigeria seems to have been done about understanding the inflammatory response in Plasmodium infected patients treated using raw liquid extract of Morinda lucida leaf. Considering Malaria is a significant public health concern in Africa, such a study seems crucial in being able to screen for potentially useful treatment / adjuvant options from traditional remedies.
However, this reviewer fails to understand the rationale of the method used in this study, the statistical analyses presented in the results, or the conclusions drawn in the discussion. This is largely due to the fact that the paper does not have enough detail in critical areas of the methodology related to study design, sample selection, the timeline of intervention and measurements in individual patients, and results.
Even with the available details it seems that the method used was inappropriate to answer the study question. It seems to be a non-randomized clinical trial. It is unclear what “age matched” means or how it adds to the study design. But the research question doesn’t mention it to be a clinical trial comparing the effect of Oowo leaf to conventional treatment in hospitals (what this conventional treatment is is also undefined). Therefore, it is unclear how the study design can answer the research question. Even if we assume that the authors actually meant to do a clinical trial, the analysis section shows no comparison between the relevant measures (the difference between Oowo leaf treatment and hospital based treatment). The constant comparison with a poorly defined “non-plasmodium infected control” is further making the paper appear confusing in its design. Considering these it cannot be said that the research was properly executed, results credible, or that it adds to existing knowledge.
There are no conclusions drawn in the article as there are only mechanical, repetitive descriptions of a statistical analysis in the result section. As such it is unclear how to review the paper on balance. Overall, to a hasty reader, it might leave an impression that there is some benefit in using Oowo leaves, and that would be an unbalanced conclusion considering the methodological weaknesses above.
The language used in the paper is ambiguous in many places as it assumes that the readers will be familiar with terms like “traditional homes”, “conventional treatment”, “non-plasmodium infected control”, etc. The abstract was not helpful in summarising the paper. There was no lay summary included.
The authors do mention that the Ethics Committee of Baptist Medical Centre at Saki reviewed the proposal and that consent of each subject was obtained. No further details are provided on ethical considerations.