If you cared to look thoroughly on the metrics of the journal you would see that its a well known journal in microbiology, with a fine performance. It might be okay to dismiss a paper without reading it if its from one of the predatory publishers with +1000 journals and jpg artifacts in their page banner. But it is ridiculous to critic a pilot study with a small number of participants for not getting published in a very top journal.

Cargo culting the journal impact factor is so counter to what science is about, that its bewildering that it is so common.

For absolute breakthrough science that is counterintuitive in medicine, I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't get published in top journals.

The H Pylori paper also didn't get published anywhere, no-one believed it. Nobel prize many years later.

Really interested in following this further.