Peer Review History
Original SubmissionNovember 7, 2019 |
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PONE-D-19-31116 Prediction of excess pregnancy weight gain using psychological, physical, and social predictors: a validated model in a prospective cohort study PLOS ONE Dear Dr. McDonald, 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 May 01 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:
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, Dayana Farias, Ph.D 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.plosone.org/attachments/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and http://www.plosone.org/attachments/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf 2. Thank you for including your ethics statement: "The Hamilton Research Ethics Board (REB #13-021) as well as local sites’ Research Ethics Board approval was obtained prior to study initiation.". i) Please amend your current ethics statement to include the full name of the ethics committee/institutional review board(s) that approved your specific study. ii) Once you have amended this/these statement(s) in the Methods section of the manuscript, please add the same text to the “Ethics Statement” field of the submission form (via “Edit Submission”). For additional information about PLOS ONE ethical requirements for human subjects research, please refer to http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-human-subjects-research. [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: No Reviewer #2: Yes ********** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: No 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: Prediction of excess pregnancy weight gain using psychological, physical, and social predictors: a validated model in a prospective cohort study The study aimed to develop and validate a predictive model of excess pregnancy weight gain using psychological, physical, ad social determinants of excess weight gain collected in early pregnancy. Although prediction studies are scarce in the gestational weight gain literature, there are issues in this paper that were not properly addressed and it needs to be improved to be considered for publication. General comments: Introduction: In general, it needs to be revised. Some major points: 1. Line 55. Reference 5 do not support the sentence because refers to only one country. A better reference to be explored in this section would have been Scott C, Andersen CT, Valdez N, et al. No global consensus: a cross-sectional survey of maternal weight policies. BMC Pregnancy Childbirth. 2014;14:167. Published 2014 May 15. doi:10.1186/1471-2393-14-167. 2. Line 59. The authors mention “hundreds of studies have examined factors associated with weight gain in pregnancy’ and refer to a meta-analysis related to parity only. There is a need to incorporate more information regarding other associated factors, not only the psychological ones that were the focus of the second paragraph. Materials and methods: 1. The approach used for the prediction modelling is quite old and more modern techniques (machine learning) should have been applied (a good example in the field would be: Weber A, Darmstadt GL, Gruber S, et al. Application of machine-learning to predict early spontaneous preterm birth among nulliparous non-Hispanic black and white women. Ann Epidemiol. 2018; 28(11): 783 – 789. e1. doi:10.1016/j.annepidem.2018.08.008) 2. Also, the authors decide to work with GWG categorized. It would be interesting to look at it as a continuous variable first, before using the IOM recommendations to categorize it. Also, joining insufficient and adequate weight gain should be avoided. Maybe a sensitive analysis comparing women with excessive vs. adequate weight gain (removing insufficient) could be performed to ensure the joining of the two categories is not introducing bias. 3. The assumption of a 2kg weight gain in the first trimester seems high for some women. Several scenarios (0, 0.5, 1, 1.5, 2 kg) could have been tested, in a sensitivity analysis. 5. Lines 161-171. The calculation of the sample size is out of order and should come right after line 103. The ideas presented in this section are a bit confusing with the present order. 6. The inclusion of the predictors could have happened in groups and there are other approaches to evaluate the fit of the model and the selection of variables. A good example would be: de Freitas Ferreira M, de Moraes CL, Braga JU, Reichenheim ME, da Veiga GV. Abusive alcohol consumption among adolescents: a predictive model for maximizing early detection and responses. Public Health. 2018;159:99–106. doi:10.1016/j.puhe.2018.02.008. 7. The decision for the collection of some variables is not clear at all (e.g.: ‘planning excessive gain’). 8. What was the imputation model considered? Results: 1. Table 1 is a chart, not a table. 2. Numerical variables (e.g.: BMI, weight gain) could be presented as means, SDs (or medians and interquartile ranges). Discussion: In general, the discussion is very superficial, lacks content and debate regarding other factors (the focus is on the psychological ones even though the aim is to evaluate a broader range of factors). 1. What is ‘agreeable’ and ‘conscientious’? The authors use this terminology without a brief explanation to enlighten the reader. 2. It is not correct to say that the comparison between the groups with and without missing data addresses selection bias. Please, review the sentence. This comparison is merely an attempt to support the assumption of MCAR or MAR (in this case, since multiple imputation was used, MAR) and does not address selection bias at all! In the best-case scenario, if the assumption of MAR holds and the amount of missing is not elevated, multiple imputation can help addressing that type of bias. 3. The comparison with reference 64 is irrelevant. The models and outcomes are completely different, and this is not a basis for comparison with these results. If studies with GWG are scarce, these is worth mentioning (and not comparing GWG models with diabetes!!). 4. Finally, what is the applicability of the prediction model? The authors declare in the introduction that the study could ‘provide direction for future interventions’, but they do not discuss in which sense the findings could help to provide those directions. Minor comments - Line 85. Was it a problem with the reference? - Was the sample restricted to adults? This is not mentioned. - Line 127. The word ‘age’ is missing - Was the final weight measurement obtained at the day of delivery? If not, there should be a limit because a weight measured 1 month prior to birth (or even before) could not be used for total weight gain calculation (it simply does not reflect the total!). - How were the means of the imputed datasets calculated? By using Rubin’s rules? If so, it is worth mentioning. - Line 285. The rate of follow-up mentioning is irrelevant if longitudinal data was not used. - References need to be formatted according to the rest of the text (remove hyperlink from reference manager) Reviewer #2: The aim of this study was to develop and validate a prediction model for excess pregnancy weight gain using early pregnancy factors which future interventions might address. In my opinion the study is interesting and well designed. The sample size is appropriate and the conclusions are drawn based on the data presented. The authors provided all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript as supporting information of the manuscript. I have only one remark. Authors should include in the study limitations information that height and weight were self-reported, not measured. This could be the reason for incorrect BMI classification before pregnancy of some participants. ********** 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: No 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 |
PONE-D-19-31116R1 Prediction of excess pregnancy weight gain using psychological, physical, and social predictors: a validated model in a prospective cohort study PLOS ONE Dear Dr. McDonald, 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 May 22 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:
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, Dayana Farias, Ph.D Academic Editor PLOS ONE [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] 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 ********** 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: No 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: I’d like to thank the authors for answering the comments and incorporating the suggestions to the text whenever possible. I strongly recommend that better prediction models are used in the future, but I agree with the answers provided to the comments on these models. I still have some considerations, though. a. I strongly recommend that the sample is restricted to adults (Age >19 yo). The use of IOM recommendations and WHO cutoffs for pregnant adolescent women is debatable, so removing adolescents from the sample should be considered. b. I reinforce the need to compare excessive gestational weight gain using as reference the ‘adequate’ category, not the combination of insufficient + adequate. This would be a sensitive analysis only, to enrich the results and the sample size would not be substantially reduced since only 15% of women presented weight gain below the guidelines. c. If the 2-kg subtraction for first trimester weight was based on the results from the data, this should be added to the text. The IOM recommendations for first trimester vary between 0.5 – 2kg, so any amount in this interval could have been used. The justification for 2-kg was according to the pattern observed in a smaller sample of women and should be informed in the text, as it was in the answer to my comments. d. The Introduction section is still focusing on psychological factors, not mentioning and exploring the other factors that might be associated with weight gain and were included in the models. e. The fact that the AUC for the training set was low (< 0.70) is a problem the authors do not explained well enough. This low AUC may suggest that the prediction model is not good enough and its generalizability may be compromised. What are the solutions for that? What is the possible explanation? Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed, thus I am fully satisfied with the authors' response. The authors provided all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript. ********** 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 [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 2 |
Prediction of excess pregnancy weight gain using psychological, physical, and social predictors: a validated model in a prospective cohort study PONE-D-19-31116R2 Dear Dr. McDonald, 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, Dayana Farias, Ph.D Academic Editor PLOS ONE 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 ********** 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 ********** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: 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 ********** 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 ********** 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: Thank you for kindly answering my comments and addressing the most critical issues. The research was well-conducted and the results are very interesting. ********** 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 |
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