Author's response to reviews Title:Health Related Quality of Life in Patients with Chronic Gastritis and Peptic Ulcer and Factors with Impact: A Longitudinal Study

2. Methods: Maybe better to say that the questionnaire was administered twice to patients? Longitudinally suggests that there was a long follow-up. Stating that there were two time-points also explain why specific statistical techniques were used. It was changed as suggested. Background 3. Second paragraph, line 3; I would suggest to revise this sentence to: ‘In the last 30 years, HRQoL has become an important outcome measure for patients with cancer and chronic diseases. The Medical Outcomes Study 36-items Short-Form Health Survey (SF-36) has been widely used as HRQoL instrument [4-5]. Moreover, the SF-36....’ It was changed as suggested. 4. Third paragraph; I would suggest to change the sentence ‘1688 respondents ... Hangzhou’ into ‘A total of 1688 respondents were recruited by multi-stage mixed sampling in 1000 households in 18 communities of Hangzhou’. It was changed as suggested. 5. Third paragraph, line 6; This sentence should be split into multiple sentences, because now it is very difficult to read. It was split into two sentences as suggested. 6. Third paragraph, line 17-20; I think it is not necessary to mention all the different types of psychometric properties that were evaluated. Just mentioning that many psychometric properties were evaluated is sufficient. Methods 7. First paragraph (Patients), second sentence; Better to rewrite. I would suggest: ‘All patients were considered for inclusion, but it was required that they were able to read, understand and complete the questionnaires. Patients who were illiterate and those with advance disease status were therefore excluded from participation’. It was changed as suggested. 8. Fourth paragraph (analysis method); I would suggest to change the heading of this paragraph to ‘statistical analysis’. It was changed as suggested. 9. Fourth paragraph (analysis method); It is not necessary to describe how the categorical variables were recoded as this information can be retrieved from table 1. It is sufficient to mention which continuous and which categorical variables were considered in all analyses. It is not true for all variables. Some variables were recoded for linear regression and not directly gotten from table 2, so it is necessary. 10. Fourth paragraph (analysis method); It is sufficient to mention that the statistical analyses were performed with SPSS, it not relevant that this was performed on a Windows XP platform. It was changed as suggested. Results 11. Fifth paragraph; I would suggest to change the heading of this paragraph to ‘Factors with impact on HRQoL’. It was changed as suggested. Discussion 12. Third paragraph, first sentence: I would suggest to add the following, “... and side effects caused by treatment..’ It was changed as suggested. 13. In the seventh paragraph, the authors repeat some results, which is unnecessary and could therefore be removed. Tables and figures: 14. Table 1: It may be informative to show if there are significant differences in socio-demographic variables between the two patients groups? 15. Table 1: ‘partly-pay’? It was changed as suggested. 16. Table 2, title: There misses a ‘)’ It was changed as suggested. 17. Table 3: It would be more clear if all abbreviations are described in the legend (CR, SRM etc). 18. Table 4 and 5, titles: May be better to state ‘Factors with impact on HRQoL’ instead of ‘Impact factors on HRQoL’. It was changed as suggested. Level of interest:An article whose findings are important to those with closely related research interests Quality of written English:Needs some language corrections before being published Statistical review:No, the manuscript does not need to be seen by a statistician. Declaration of competing interests: I have no competing interests