Peer Review History

Original SubmissionDecember 22, 2019
Decision Letter - Jose Manuel Garcia Aznar, Editor

PONE-D-19-34657

Frequency-related viscoelastic properties of human incisor periodontal ligament under dynamic compressive loading

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Yan,

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Kind regards,

Jose Manuel Garcia Aznar

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: Yes

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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 the paper, the results of dynamic compression tests are presented for the periodontal human ligament. The study aims to determine the viscoelastic properties of this tissue which have not been previously analyzed in the literature. The manuscript is well written, structured and the discussion section provides interesting theories and perspectives of the ligament biomechanical role.

As a general comment regarding the way the results are presented, why Table 1 and Fig. 2 include the statistics of all the samples and then they are split into central and lateral incisors? Why not presenting then separately from the beginning? I couldn’t find an explanation of this fact in the text.

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Reviewer #1: No

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Revision 1

Response to Reviewers

We appreciate the reviewers’ positive comments and constructive suggestions on our manuscript, entitled “Frequency-related viscoelastic properties of the human incisor periodontal ligament under dynamic compressive loading” (PONE-D-19-34657). We have addressed all of the comments to the best of our ability, and we believe the revisions requested by the reviewers have significantly improved the quality of our manuscript. The reviewers’ unedited comments are provided below in black text followed by our responses in blue text.

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

Authors’ reply:

Thank you for your reminder. We have added another fund named Jiangsu Provincial Key Laboratory of Oral Diseases Research Fund (JSKLOD-KF-1901) which has also been stated it in our cover letter.

2. 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.

3. In your Methods section, please provide additional information regarding the human samples used in the study. Specifically:

- Please specify the source of the fresh corpses.

- State in your ethics statement whether the study involved the use of donated tissue/organs from any vulnerable populations.

- Provide information on the consent given by the donor or their next of kin. Examples of vulnerable populations include prisoners, subjects with reduced mental capacity due to illness or age, and children. If a vulnerable population was used, please describe the population and justify the decision to use tissue/organ donations from this group. If not, please state in your Ethics Statement, "None of the corpses were from a vulnerable population and all donors or next of kin provided written informed consent that was freely given."

- If the authors did not have access to any identifying information for the human samples, please state this.

Authors’ reply:

Thank you for your valuable review of our work. The fresh corpses came from Department of Anatomy of Nanjing Medical University with a declared legal consent given by the donor or their next of kin attained by the same administration. The study did not involve the use of donated tissue/organs from any vulnerable populations. We did not have access to any identifying information for the human samples.

More details have been provided in the revised paper, as listed below:

The fresh corpses used in this study were provided by the Department of Anatomy of Nanjing Medical University with a declared legal consent given by the donor or their next of kin attained by the same administration. The study did not involve the use of donated tissue/organs from any vulnerable populations. The authors did not have access to any identifying information for the human samples. (Details see page 6 line 119-123.)

3. We suggest you thoroughly copyedit your manuscript for language usage, spelling, and grammar. If you do not know anyone who can help you do this, you may wish to consider employing a professional scientific editing service.

Whilst you may use any professional scientific editing service of your choice, PLOS has partnered with both American Journal Experts (AJE) and Editage to provide discounted services to PLOS authors. Both organizations have experience helping authors meet PLOS guidelines and can provide language editing, translation, manuscript formatting, and figure formatting to ensure your manuscript meets our submission guidelines. To take advantage of our partnership with AJE, visit the AJE website (http://learn.aje.com/plos/) for a 15% discount off AJE services. To take advantage of our partnership with Editage, visit the Editage website (www.editage.com) and enter referral code PLOSEDIT for a 15% discount off Editage services. If the PLOS editorial team finds any language issues in text that either AJE or Editage has edited, the service provider will re-edit the text for free.

Authors’ reply:

Thank you for your valuable suggestion. We apologize the language issues in the previous manuscript. To make our paper easier to follow, the manuscript has been extensively reviewed and revised by American Journal Experts (AJE). We hope that the language in the revised paper has been substantially improved.

Reviewer #1 As a general comment regarding the way the results are presented, why Table 1 and Fig. 2 include the statistics of all the samples and then they are split into central and lateral incisors? Why not presenting then separately from the beginning? I couldn’t find an explanation of this fact in the text.

Authors’ reply:

Thank you for your valuable suggestion. Because the central incisor and the lateral incisor are adjacent teeth, and they are under similar bite force. Moreover, the central incisor and the lateral incisor are often retracted as a whole in orthodontic treatment. Therefore, we showed the results including the central incisor and the lateral incisor at the beginning to show the effect of frequency on the viscoelastic properties of the incisor PDL.

However, in a more detailed and specified view, the higher viscosity of the central incisor demonstrated that its PDL has a better energy-absorbing or shock-absorbing capacity for sudden loading than the lateral incisor, which indicates that the central incisor PDL can withstand more mastication force than the lateral incisor PDL. Since this particular comparison between the incisors in our study was of importance during orthodontic force application, we presented the central incisor and lateral incisor separately additionally to the scope of our study.

More details have been provided in the revised paper, as listed below:

In concordance with Tanaka [30], the higher viscosity of the central incisor in our study demonstrated that the central incisor PDL has a better energy-absorbing or shock-absorbing capacity for sudden loading than the lateral incisor, indicating that the central incisor PDL can withstand more bite force than the lateral incisor PDL. However, the central incisor and the lateral incisor are adjacent teeth and are often under similar bite force and retracted as a whole during orthodontic treatment (for details, see page 16, lines 311-317.)

Attachments
Attachment
Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx
Decision Letter - Jose Manuel Garcia Aznar, Editor

Frequency-related viscoelastic properties of human incisor periodontal ligament under dynamic compressive loading

PONE-D-19-34657R1

Dear Dr. Yan,

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

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

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Kind regards,

Jose Manuel Garcia Aznar

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: 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: No

**********

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: (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 - Jose Manuel Garcia Aznar, Editor

PONE-D-19-34657R1

Frequency-related viscoelastic properties of the human incisor periodontal ligament under dynamic compressive loading

Dear Dr. Yan:

I'm 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 let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, 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 and supporting open access.

Kind regards,

PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff

on behalf of

Dr. Jose Manuel Garcia Aznar

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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