On 2017 Oct 19, Polina Vishnyakova commented:

Dear colleagues, in order to maintain a healthy scientific debate we need to clarify the statement, which you provided in Discussion of this paper. You wrote: «These findings are inconsistent with the findings of Vishnyakova et al. who reported that OPA1 was upregulated in PE placentas. […] The findings of Vishnyakova et al. were mainly based on gene expression. Levels of DNA or RNA may be unable to predict protein levels accurately, as they do not account for post-transcriptional/translational modifications». It is important to note than in our work we observed changes both on mRNA and protein content level of OPA1 and these findings surely disagree with your data. But we think that this could be explained by the difference in patients characteristic: we divided patients with preeclampsia basing on gestational age while you included women only with severe preeclampsia. Plus in current paper you analyzed only OPA1-L form, but not both forms (full OPA1-L and cleaved OPA1-S). So obtained difference in our findings could be explained with these points. Best regards.

On 2017 Oct 19, Polina Vishnyakova commented:

Dear colleagues, in order to maintain a healthy scientific debate we need to clarify the statement, which you provided in Discussion of this paper. You wrote: «These findings are inconsistent with the findings of Vishnyakova et al. who reported that OPA1 was upregulated in PE placentas. […] The findings of Vishnyakova et al. were mainly based on gene expression. Levels of DNA or RNA may be unable to predict protein levels accurately, as they do not account for post-transcriptional/translational modifications». It is important to note than in our work we observed changes both on mRNA and protein content level of OPA1 and these findings surely disagree with your data. But we think that this could be explained by the difference in patients characteristic: we divided patients with preeclampsia basing on gestational age while you included women only with severe preeclampsia. Plus in current paper you analyzed only OPA1-L form, but not both forms (full OPA1-L and cleaved OPA1-S). So obtained difference in our findings could be explained with these points. Best regards.