Peer Review History

Original SubmissionAugust 25, 2019
Decision Letter - Andrew W Taylor, Editor

PONE-D-19-23998

The impact of diabetes mellitus medication on the incidence of endogenous endophthalmitis

PLOS ONE

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The pateint popultion needs to be better described, and more describtion of the mechanim is needed. 

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Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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This study was supported by grants from the Tri-Service General Hospital Research Foundation (TSGH-C107-004 and TSGH-C107-090) and the Ministry of National Defense Medical Affairs Bureau (MAB-108-049). The sponsors had no roles in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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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

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

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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

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

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Reviewer #1: Yes

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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: In this manuscript, Chien et al. describe the results of a matched cohort study of the incidence of endogenous endophthalmitis (EE) among patients diagnosed with diabetes mellitus (DM). The objective was to determine whether treatment of diabetes is associated with a lower incidence of EE. The authors evaluated 121,800 patients with DM. Among these patients, 24,360 were treated with medication, and 97,440 were not. Single-agent therapy with insulin, metformin, gliclazide, glimepiride, or repaglinide and combination therapy with glimepiride/metformin or repaglinide/metformin were associated with a decreased risk of EE. Neither sex nor age influenced risk, however those patients with liver abscesses were at increased risk relative to patients without liver abscesses. There are a number of issues with this manuscript. The first is that no information was provided on patient diagnosis such as A1C levels or whether the patients were type 1 or 2. Second, it also is not clear why so many patients with diabetes were not being treated. Were they all under dietary control for diabetes, or were they without medication due to lack of compliance or lack of medical care? Finally, the authors were not clear on their rationale for performing this study. Indeed, diabetes mellitus is an underlying risk factor for developing endogenous endophthalmitis, however they were vague in describing the mechanism for this. Another group has demonstrated that this correlation is likely due to the break down of the blood retinal barrier during diabetes development and progression to diabetic rertinopathy, and likely has little to do with keratitis.

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Reviewer #1: No

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Revision 1

Dear Editor-in-Chief,

We very much appreciate the comments and critiques from the reviewers regarding Manuscript ID PONE-D-19-23998, entitled "The impact of diabetes mellitus medication on the incidence of endogenous endophthalmitis". We have performed the additional work requested by the reviewers to improve our manuscript. We have also written point-by-point responses to the reviewers’ comments. Overall, the manuscript has been substantially revised to reflect each of the reviewers’ suggestions. All coauthors have read and approved this manuscript and agreed to fully transfer its copyright to PLOS ONE. I sign for and accept responsibility for this material on behalf of all coauthors. We hope that these changes will make the paper more impactful and that it can be published in your journal in the near future.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

Ke-Hung Chien, MD

Tzu-Heng Weng, MD

Department of Ophthalmology, Tri-Service General Hospital, National Defense Medical Center, Taipei, Taiwan; No. 325, Section 2, Cheng-Kung Road, Neihu District, Taipei City, 11490, Taiwan, Republic of China.

Attachments
Attachment
Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers-PONE 20191118.docx
Decision Letter - Andrew W Taylor, Editor

The impact of diabetes mellitus medication on the incidence of endogenous endophthalmitis

PONE-D-19-23998R1

Dear Dr. Weng,

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.

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With kind regards,

Andrew W Taylor, Ph.D.

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

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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: (No Response)

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

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

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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: (No Response)

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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: (No Response)

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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: (No Response)

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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: No

Formally Accepted
Acceptance Letter - Andrew W Taylor, Editor

PONE-D-19-23998R1

The impact of diabetes mellitus medication on the incidence of endogenous endophthalmitis

Dear Dr. Weng:

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.

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Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE.

With kind regards,

PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff

on behalf of

Dr. Andrew W Taylor

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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