Referee 1's review:

The most likely explanation for the decreases in expresion in Sprouty2 in the DLPFC in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder is the lower pH of the 2 patient groups relative to the controls. This is most likely secondary to prior neuroleptic treatment. The failure to see these correlations in individual groups and/or with neurleptic levels at the time of death is probably related to small numbers and insufficient power. Similarly, the correlation between expression of BDNF and Sprouty2 may well be secondary to neuroleptics as well. As a consequence I would recommend strongly that the conclusions be rewritten to emphasize the possibility that these decreases are secondary to treatment rather than to factors that are significant in the disease procees of eith schizophrenia and/or bipolar disorder. There are, of course, many other potential confounds that are not addressed in this study including substance abuse (especially nicotine), manner of death, etc. Lastly, the use of one control gene for the qRt-PCR is somewhat below the usual standard in the field at this time. Many groups use a geometric mean from three control genes.

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N.B. These are the comments made by the referee when reviewing an earlier version of this paper. Prior to publication the manuscript has been revised in light of these comments and to address other editorial requirements.