LAUSR

Wehave read the article entitled “An evaluation of oxidative and nitrosative stress in children-who-stutter and its relationship to severity,” published by Bilal N et al. with great interest [1]. The authors evaluated the levels of oxidative and nitrosative stress by comparing a stuttering group and a control group and evaluated the relationship between the oxidative and nitrosative stress levels and the severity of the stutter. They examined malondialdehyde (MDA), 3-nitrotyrosine (3-NT), nitric oxide (NO), catalase (CAT), and superoxide dismutase (SOD) concentrations in blood. So, they found that the oxidative and nitrosative stress levels of the stuttering patients were higher than those of the control group. Also, NO andMDA could be important in patients with a stutter. This is a very interesting study and the first study to provide a hypothetical suggestion that patients with a stutter are under oxidative stress. However, wewould like to make two comments about this study for the benefit of the readers. First, systemic causes of oxidative stress include ischemia, trauma, hemorrhage, intoxications, allergy, exposure to radioactive substances, alcohol, and drug use. Besides smoking, polluted air, ozone, benzene, and sulfur dioxide can lead to oxidative stresses. Also, if the minerals such as free iron and copper serum levels are more than normal, they cause increased oxidative stress [2]. So, the authors excluded patients with various diseases and medical conditions such as the use of narcotics, cigarette smoking, alcohol consumption, those with systemic disease, recent operation, active infection or a diagnosis of cancer. However, they did not mention about other conditions and diseases which can greatly influence serum oxidative stress levels such as metabolic syndrome, especially obesity. It is well known that metabolic syndrome is an obesity-associated collection of disorders and is also associated with oxidative stress which means overproduction of reactive oxygen species (ROS) [3]. Therefore, although they did not mention about the body weight of all participants, we suggest that it is important to measure the weight of all participants.