Long-term effect of middle ear disease on temporal processing and P300 in two different populations of children

Leticia Reis Borges; Milaine Dominici Sanfins; Caroline Donadon; Dani Tomlin; Maria Francisca Colella-Santos

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0232839

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionDecember 6, 2019
6 Dec 2019 Author Response Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Rebuttal letter.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0232839.r001
29 Jan 2020 Decision Letter - Jorge Spratley, Editor PONE-D-19-32188 Long-term effect of middle ear disease on Temporal Processing and P300 in two different populations of children PLOS ONE Dear Ms Borges, 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. We would appreciate receiving your revised manuscript by Mar 14 2020 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, Jorge Spratley, MD, PhD Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments: This manuscript presents the results of a multicenter study, comparing children form Brazil and Australia, in respect to the putative influence of otitis media-related hearing deprivation early in life and temporal auditory cortex function. The topic is provocative and the study is original. The English of the manuscript lacks care and must be fully revised by an English native speaker for the sake of readability. Overall, the article improved very much when compared to the initial submission. The following questions are still open and should be addressed by the authors: 1. Material and Methods L.124: Were the two cohorts, from Brazil and Australia, age-matched? 2. L.134: A definition of Recurrent Otitis Media must be clearly depicted. The text is not clear in separating infectious acute otitis media (AOM) and non-infectious otitis media with effusion (OME). AOM can cause inner disfunction through middle ear/inner ear interactions, via bacterial toxins. Could this occurrence influence the results? 3. L158: Were the audiologic tests carried out in similar conditions and with equal audiometric devices. Calibrations could have influenced the outcomes? 4. Sometimes the scores reported in this type of central processing exams are examiner-dependent. Could the authors clarify how they did to harmonize the results from both centers? 5. L.228/9 It is confusing: No significant differences in behavioural responses for P300 were found and this is followed by a p<0.05. 6. L237/8: the same as above (L.228/9) applies. 7. L.272: elevation means aggravation? (Seems a literal translation) 8. L.275/8: How is “severe” OME defined. Is it worse to have intermittent OME than persistent OME in respect to auditory deprivation? 9. L.294: found means finding? 10. L.300: temetrically? 11. L.317/8 correct grammar 12. L.332 correct grammar 13. L.337: queues mean waiting lists? 14. L. 342/2 correct grammar 15. Ref #7 Author name must be revised 16. Ref #19 is incomplete 17. Ref #38 the journal reference is correct? 18. Ref #43 seems an unpublished information 19. Ref #46 is the only one with et al. Was it borrowed from elsewhere? 20. Ref #47 the url is missing 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 2. Please provide additional details regarding participant consent. In the ethics statement in the Methods and online submission information, please ensure that you have specified whether consent was written or verbal/oral. If consent was verbal/oral, please specify: a) whether the ethics committee approved the verbal/oral consent procedure, b) why written consent could not be obtained, and c) how verbal/oral consent was recorded. If your study included minors, please state whether you obtained consent from parents or guardians in these cases. 3. We noticed you have some minor occurrence(s) of overlapping text with the following previous publication(s), which needs to be addressed: https://doi.org/10.1155/2019/8930904 https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.33891 In your revision ensure you cite all your sources (including your own works), and quote or rephrase any duplicated text outside the Methods section. Further consideration is dependent on these concerns being addressed. 4. We note that you have indicated that data from this study are available upon request. PLOS only allows data to be available upon request if there are legal or ethical restrictions on sharing data publicly. For information on unacceptable data access restrictions, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-unacceptable-data-access-restrictions. In your revised cover letter, please address the following prompts: a) If there are ethical or legal restrictions on sharing a de-identified data set, please explain them in detail (e.g., data contain potentially identifying or sensitive patient information) and who has imposed them (e.g., an ethics committee). Please also provide contact information for a data access committee, ethics committee, or other institutional body to which data requests may be sent. b) If there are no restrictions, please upload the minimal anonymized data set necessary to replicate your study findings as either Supporting Information files or to a stable, public repository and provide us with the relevant URLs, DOIs, or accession numbers. Please see http://www.bmj.com/content/340/bmj.c181.long for guidelines on how to de-identify and prepare clinical data for publication. For a list of acceptable repositories, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-recommended-repositories. We will update your Data Availability statement on your behalf to reflect the information you provide. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: [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. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0232839.r002
Revision 1
19 Mar 2020 Author Response This answer also is attached as response to reviewers in attach files. The manuscript was fully revised by an English native speaker and the changes were highlighted in yellow. Below is the answer for each comment in bold and the number of the pages of each change in the manuscript: Editor Comments: 1. Material and Methods L.124: Were the two cohorts, from Brazil and Australia, age-matched? Yes, the age matched. The mean age of each group was described in the lines 142, 145, 148 and 151. 2. L.134: A definition of Recurrent Otitis Media must be clearly depicted. The text is not clear in separating infectious acute otitis media (AOM) and non-infectious otitis media with effusion (OME). AOM can cause inner disfunction through middle ear/inner ear interactions, via bacterial toxins. Could this occurrence influence the results? A definition of OME was described in the Introduction: line 58. When we described children with Recorrent Otitis Media we wanted to highlight the number of episodes, but all these children had OME. In order to provide a better understanding we replaced ROM for OME. Line 135. 3. L158: Were the audiologic tests carried out in similar conditions and with equal audiometric devices. Calibrations could have influenced the outcomes? We were very concerned about the devices calibration in both countries. The tests were applied by the same type of audiometric devices and ear phones to avoid any possibility of influence in the results. This information was included in the lines 156, 157, 159 and 160. 4. Sometimes the scores reported in this type of central processing exams are examiner-dependent. Could the authors clarify how they did to harmonize the results from both centers? In both centers the GIN test and FPT were applied by the same examiner to harmonize the results. This information was written in the lines 180 and 181. 5. L.228/9 It is confusing: No significant differences in behavioural responses for P300 were found and this is followed by a p<0.05. We wrongly written “for” and “p<0.05” instead of “and” and “p>0.05”. The correct sentence was rewritten in the line 233. 6. L237/8: the same as above (L.228/9) applies. The symbol “<” was changed to “>” in the Line 242. 7. L.272: elevation means aggravation? (Seems a literal translation) This change was made. Line 271. 8. L.275/8: How is “severe” OME defined. Is it worse to have intermittent OME than persistent OME in respect to auditory deprivation? The term “severe” means how many episodes of OME the children had. In the article cited the author suggested that the cohort study did not have enough episodes to cause auditory deprivation and reduce temporal abilities. The sentence was rewritten in the lines 274 and 275. 9. L.294: found means finding? We wrongly written the word “found” instead of “finding”. The correct sentence was rewritten in the line 293. 10. L.300: temetrically? The correct word is telemetrically. Is was rewritten in the line 299. 11. L.317/8 correct gramar The gramar was corrected in the line 317. 12. L.332 correct gramar The gramar was corrected in the line 331. 13. L.337: queues mean waiting lists? Yes. We replace the word queues for waiting lists in the line 336. 14. L. 342/2 correct gramar The gramar was corrected. Lines 341 to 346. 15. Ref #7 Author name must be revised The Author name was corrected. 16. Ref #19 is incomplete The reference 19 was corrected. 17. Ref #38 the journal reference is correct? Yes, it is corrected. Now ir Ref #39 18. Ref #43 seems an unpublished information This reference was removed. 19. Ref #46 is the only one with et al. Was it borrowed from elsewhere? This article has more than 6 authors. So after the sixth author we wrote et al. 20. Ref #47 the url is missing This reference has been updated and rewritten. Journal requirements: All journal requirements were made. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0232839.r003
23 Apr 2020 Decision Letter - Jorge Spratley, Editor Long-term effect of middle ear disease on Temporal Processing and P300 in two different populations of children PONE-D-19-32188R1 Dear Dr. Borges, 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, Jorge Spratley, MD, PhD Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0232839.r004
Formally Accepted
29 Apr 2020 Acceptance Letter - Jorge Spratley, Editor PONE-D-19-32188R1 Long-term effect of middle ear disease on Temporal Processing and P300 in two different populations of children Dear Dr. Borges: 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 Professor Jorge Spratley Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0232839.r005

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 .