Dear Dr. XXX, Thank you for arranging a timely review for our manuscript. We are pleased to know that our study is of general interest for the readers of NUTRITION. We have carefully evaluated the reviewers’ critical comments and thoughtful suggestions, responded to these suggestions point-by-point, and revised the manuscript accordingly. All changes made to the text are in red so that they may be easily identified. With regard to the reviewers’ comments and suggestions, we wish to reply as follows: Enclosures: (1) Correspondences to your reviewers; (2) One copy of the revised manuscript; (3) A floppy disk containing the revised manuscript. (4) Copyright assignment To review er #1 1. The author should add a few review articles on ghrelin for readers in the Introduction. We added two reviews in our revised manuscript. 2. The increase in ghrelin levels do not necessary indicate that weight loss in disease is well compensated (Introduction and Discussion). This may be interpreted to be insufficient to recover to the previous body weight. There is possibility that the increase in ghrelin levels may result from the insufficient to recover to the previous body weight, but it is more likely that the increase in ghrelin level indicate that weight loss in disease is well compensated. Shimizu et al1 reported that baseline plasma ghrelin level was significantly higher in cachectic patients with lung cancer than in noncachectic patients and control subjects. As weight loss is a chronic process and ghrelin levels may change more rapid than weight loss, the increase in ghrelin in those chronic diseases is unlikely result from the insufficient to recover to the previous body weight. Moreover, this author a...
