PONE-D-19-30682

Atmospheric impregnation behavior of calcium phosphate materials for antibiotic therapy in neurotrauma surgery

PLOS ONE

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Esmaiel Jabbari, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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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

Reviewer #2: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: 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

Reviewer #2: 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

Reviewer #2: 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: (1) In the Introduction Section, a brief review of the literature is lacking. Has any work been reported on this topic? If so, what are the shortcomings of these studies?

(2) Throughout the manuscript, it best to replace "time" with "duration of impregnation".

(3) In the Materials and Methods Section, it was stated that tests were conducted using (a) special equipment, under atmospheric impregnation and (b) without special equipment, under atmospheric condition. However, it appears that the only results given as those obtained using special equipment, under atmospheric impregnation.

(4) Why was a parametric method (unpaired t-test) used for the statistical analysis? It should be noted that before using a parametric method, normality must be established for each of the datasets. Thus, it is best to use a non-parametric method, such as the Kruskal-Wallis method with an appropriate post-hoc test (such as Bonferroni).

(5) With regard to Figure 4, there is some confusion with regard to error bars:

(a) why are there error bars on the theoretical results?

(b) why are error bars not shown in some of the experimental results?

(6) In the Results Section, why are there no results of the statistical comparison between impregnation ratios under atmospheric pressure [ATMOS RATIO) versus when the decompression machine was used (per JIS A1509-3 Standard) [DECOMP RATIO]?

(7) As a follow-up to item (6), from the results presented in Figure 4, it appears that, by and large,

for a given CP, DECOMP RATIO is markedly higher than ATMOS RATIO. Thus, the results do not support the authors' assertion/hypothesis.

(8) In the Discussion Section, please add statements about study limitations. For each limitation, state (a) why it was used; and (b) why its use does not undermine the conclusion reached in the study.

(9) As a general comment, the work presented in this manuscript is very limited in its scope. For example, how does duration of impregnation affect physical, mechanical, and other properties of the CaP-based composite that are crucial for use in neurotrauma surgery (ATMOS group versus DECOMP group)? What is the impact on duration of the surgery?

This shortcoming of the work reported in this manuscript makes it very difficult to assess the extent to which the present findings will influence surgical practice (if at all).

Reviewer #2: This paper is acceptable after the minor revision.

Difference in impregnation ratio between hydroxyapatite and b-TCP with similar porosity should be discussed in more detail, especially D and E in Fig. 3.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Atmospheric impregnation behavior of calcium phosphate materials for antibiotic therapy in neurotrauma surgery

PONE-D-19-30682R1

Dear Dr. KATO,

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,

Esmaiel Jabbari, 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: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: 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: 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

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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: 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 author's effort in including a brief review of the relevant literature is noted. However, the authors included comments on articles by only one research group (Itokazu et al. [Ref. #s 9-11]).

Critical comments on relevant article(s) from at least one other author should be included.

Reviewer #2: This paper is well revised according to the reviewers' comments. So it is acceptable for publication.

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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

Reviewer #2: No