Peer Review History

Original SubmissionJune 11, 2019
Decision Letter - Filipe Manuel Clemente, Editor

PONE-D-19-16566

Assessment of energy expenditure during high intensity cycling and running using a heart rate and activity monitor in young active adults

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr Klass,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

The article has merit and it is interesting. However, major changes should be made to improve the overall quality of the article before acceptance.

We would appreciate receiving your revised manuscript by Oct 18 2019 11:59PM. When you are ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter.

To enhance the reproducibility of your results, we recommend that if applicable you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io, where a protocol can be assigned its own identifier (DOI) such that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

  • A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). This letter should be uploaded as separate file and labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
  • A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. This file should be uploaded as separate file and labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
  • An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. This file should be uploaded as separate file and labeled 'Manuscript'.

Please note while forming your response, if your article is accepted, you may have the opportunity to make the peer review history publicly available. The record will include editor decision letters (with reviews) and your responses to reviewer comments. If eligible, we will contact you to opt in or out.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Filipe Manuel Clemente, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal Requirements:

When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements.

1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at

http://www.journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and http://www.journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf

[Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.]

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Partly

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: Brief Summary:

Authors aimed to evaluate the accuracy of the Actiheart to assess activity related energy expenditure on HR and activity counts in young and very active subjects during running and cycling. To achieve this aim, they estimated total energy expenditure by using Weir equation and then compare it with data obtained from Activeheart based on different. However some methodological issues should be addressed. I would advise “major revision” for this manuscript based on general comments, as describe below:

General comments:

Abstract: the method for indirect calorimetry is not mentioned. In my opinion, it’s very important as this method is used as reference to verify the accuracy of the Actiheart data.

HR sleeping: I cannot understand the physiological relevance for the present study. Probably, its relevance is missing.

Could explain please why 2 individuals were excluded ? How data is lost? And the reliability of the data obtained from Actiheart ?

The main question of the present study is that you missed the determinants of energy expenditure that includes, body size, body composition, sex (as you used both, 4 female and 16male), age, physical fitness, hormonal status. How to ensure that there was no influence of these factors? Is any way to consider these factors in your data analysis ? Please, include a sentence in the introduction and discussion with information explaining how these determinants can influence your data ?

Reviewer #2: Abstract

Please add gender and age of the sample

Introduction

Would be better to add hypothesis

Methods

Participants

- Please add exclusion criteria

- Please explain how the activity level of the sample was determined

Protocol

- Please mention the time of the day of the experimental sessions

Sleeping HR

- Please add reference citation(s) to the sentence starting with “To that aim subjects had to …”

**********

6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: Yes: Sílvia Rocha-Rodrigues

Reviewer #2: No

[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files to be viewed.]

While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email us at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.

Revision 1

Response to Reviewer #1:

Brief Summary:

Authors aimed to evaluate the accuracy of the Actiheart to assess activity related energy expenditure on HR and activity counts in young and very active subjects during running and cycling. To achieve this aim, they estimated total energy expenditure by using Weir equation and then compare it with data obtained from Activeheart based on different. However some methodological issues should be addressed. I would advise “major revision” for this manuscript based on general comments, as describe below:

We thank the reviewer for the constructive comments that helped us to improve the clarity of the method section and the quality of the introduction and discussion. We did our best to better explain/discuss the points you raised and to adapt the manuscript as suggested. We hope to have met your expectations. Please find also below our responses to your comments.

General comments:

Abstract: the method for indirect calorimetry is not mentioned. In my opinion, it’s very important as this method is used as reference to verify the accuracy of the Actiheart data.

The method used is now clarified in the text, as requested (p2, line 28-29).

HR sleeping: I cannot understand the physiological relevance for the present study. Probably, its relevance is missing.

The group calibration HR algorithm incorporated in the Actiheart uses the HR above sleeping HR (HRaS) instead of “raw HR” to calculate AEE. Since sleeping heart rate varies from subject to subject and is lower in fit subjects (Andrews, 1971; Hiilloskorpi et al, 2003), using HRaS (based on individual sleeping HR) is thought to reduce the error due to between-individual variance in the HR–AEE relationship (Hiilloskorpi et al, 2003) used in the group calibration equations. A clarification has been added in the method section to explain the relevance (p8, line 136-139).

Could explain please why 2 individuals were excluded ? How data is lost? And the reliability of the data obtained from Actiheart ?

Based on previous literature, Actiheart HR data collection during walking and running is considered as reliable and similar to ECG recordings in laboratory environment (Brage et al 2005, Barreira et al 2009). However, during intense exercise, body movements and sweating may alter the contact of ECG electrodes and induce ECG signal artifacts affecting the quality of HR data or leading to the loss of signal detection. Poor ECG signal has generated unreadable HR data in 2 out of our 18 subjects. This clarification has been added in the methods (p6, line 97) and this limitation of the AH is now better explained in the discussion (p21, line 414-417).

The main question of the present study is that you missed the determinants of energy expenditure that includes, body size, body composition, sex (as you used both, 4 female and 16 male), age, physical fitness, hormonal status. How to ensure that there was no influence of these factors? Is any way to consider these factors in your data analysis ? Please, include a sentence in the introduction and discussion with information explaining how these determinants can influence your data ?

We agree with the reviewer comment. All these determinants may influence energy expenditure during exercise since they impact balance of substrate utilization, work efficiency and the relation between HR increase and energy expenditure during exercise. There is however no clear consensus regarding the effect of the menstrual cycle on substrate utilization during exercise or on endurance performance (Hilloskorpi et al,1999, 20:438-4; Isacco et al, 2012 [Sports Med. 2012, 42:327-42]; Oosthuyse and Bosch, 2010 [Sports Med. 2010, 40:207-27]).

Additional information has been added in the introduction (p10, line 63-67) and discussion (p19, line 377-382 and p21, 410-413) as requested.

The aim of the present study was not to evaluate the influence of those different parameters on energy expenditure during exercise but to validate the Actiheart with the user’s data and the models available in the Actiheart software and commonly used by practitioners and researchers. Data that need to be entered when a new user is created in the AH software are: age, sex, height and sleeping heart rate. Those parameters are used to estimate resting energy expenditure (using the Schofield equation; Schofield 1985). In addition to heart rate (value above sleeping heart rate) and activity counts, sex is also included in the HR and ACT Group calibration equations used by the Actiheart to estimate activity related energy expenditure (AEE). This precision has been added in the methods section (p10, line 192-194). Unfortunately, body composition, fitness level or other factors affecting energy expenditure are not taken into account in the group calibration equations. This partly explains why individual calibration of the HR-AEE relationship applied in the present study greatly improves energy expenditure estimation.

Response to Reviewer #2:

We thank the reviewer for the constructive comments that helped us to improve the clarity of the introduction and method section. We did our best to adapt the manuscript as suggested. We hope to have met your expectations. Please find also below our responses to your comments.

Abstract

Please add gender and age of the sample

Gender and age have been added as requested (p2, line 28).

Introduction

Would be better to add hypothesis

Hypothesis has been added in the introduction as requested (p5-6, line 91-93).

Methods

Participants

- Please add exclusion criteria

Inclusion and exclusion criteria have been added as requested (p6, line 99-101).

- Please explain how the activity level of the sample was determined

No specific method (questionnaire, agenda or other) was used to quantify the activity level of the sample. The activity level was estimated by the answers to the question: “Which sport(s) do you practice and how many times a week?” This part of the method section has been adapted to make it clearer we did not use a specific method to quantify the activity level of the sample (p6, line 106-107).

Protocol

- Please mention the time of the day of the experimental sessions

This is now clarified in the methods (p6, line 111). For each subject, the experiments were conducted at about the same time in the morning or the afternoon. We also added that subjects had to refrain from food and caffeine intake within the 3 h before the experiment (p6, line 120).

Sleeping HR

- Please add reference citation(s) to the sentence starting with “To that aim subjects had to …”

The relevance of the sleeping HR and a reference has been added as requested (p8, line 136-139 and 143).

Attachments
Attachment
Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx
Decision Letter - Filipe Manuel Clemente, Editor

Assessment of energy expenditure during high intensity cycling and running using a heart rate and activity monitor in young active adults

PONE-D-19-16566R1

Dear Dr. Klass,

We are pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it complies with all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you will receive an e-mail containing information on the amendments required prior to publication. When all required modifications have been addressed, you will receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will proceed to our production department and be scheduled for publication.

Shortly after the formal acceptance letter is sent, an invoice for payment will follow. To ensure an efficient production and billing process, please log into Editorial Manager at https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the "Update My Information" link at the top of the page, and update your user information. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org.

If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to enable them to help maximize its impact. If they will be preparing press materials for this manuscript, you must inform our press team as soon as possible and no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org.

With kind regards,

Filipe Manuel Clemente, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

**********

2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: The authors exceeded all the questions and suggestions of reviewers. Based on that, I recommend accept for this publication.

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

**********

7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: Yes: Sílvia Rocha-Rodrigues

Reviewer #2: No

Formally Accepted
Acceptance Letter - Filipe Manuel Clemente, Editor

PONE-D-19-16566R1

Assessment of energy expenditure during high intensity cycling and running using a heart rate and activity monitor in young active adults

Dear Dr. Klass:

I am pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department.

If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper at this point, to enable them to help maximize its impact. If they will be preparing press materials for this manuscript, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org.

For any other questions or concerns, please email plosone@plos.org.

Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE.

With kind regards,

PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff

on behalf of

Dr. Filipe Manuel Clemente

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Open letter on the publication of peer review reports

PLOS recognizes the benefits of transparency in the peer review process. Therefore, we enable the publication of all of the content of peer review and author responses alongside final, published articles. Reviewers remain anonymous, unless they choose to reveal their names.

We encourage other journals to join us in this initiative. We hope that our action inspires the community, including researchers, research funders, and research institutions, to recognize the benefits of published peer review reports for all parts of the research system.

Learn more at ASAPbio .