PONE-D-19-35837

Spatial Autocorrelation and Epidemiological Survey of Visceral Leishmaniosis in an endemic area of Azerbaijan Region, Northwest of Iran

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr Moradi-Asl,

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Albert Schriefer, M.D., Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

- Improve titles in Results section to be more descriptive.

- Include legends to figures.

- Check figures axes titles. For example, Y axis in figure 4 is labeled ‘Vl’ instead of ‘VL’.

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4. During your revisions, please note that a simple title correction is required to ensure correct spelling. The title should read: "Spatial Autocorrelation and Epidemiological Survey of Visceral Leishmaniasis in an endemic area of Azerbaijan Region, Northwest of Iran". Please ensure this is updated in the manuscript file and the online submission information.

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"This work was supported by the Ardabil University of Medical Sciences (Project numbers 92218)."

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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: No

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

Reviewer #1: I Don't Know

Reviewer #2: No

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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: No

Reviewer #2: No

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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: No

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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: Dear Authors

Please consider the following comments:

1- Please یouble-check the spelling of the words in all manuscript. For example in title please change leishmaniosis to leishmaniasis.

2- The article needs to be edited in English by a native.

3- Please define in methodology how did you calculated the incidence of VL?

4- Please explain more about the method of analysis for Moran's Index and General G analysis. Did you used the points of disease or considered the counties as the analysis units.

5- Please cite a relevant reference for MaxEnt model.

6- The reference 24 cited in line 104 seems to be irrelevant to the analysis.

7- Fig 5 for the result of spatial auto-correlation should be changed with a map resulted from this analysis.

8- In all maps please use "Urmia Lake"

9- Table 1 was not included in the reviewed file.

10- Please discuss more about the role of weather and environmental variables on the habitat suitability for life cycle of VL.

Reviewer #2: This study analyzes the spatial patterns of visceral leishmaniasis in three provinces (Ardabil, East Azerbaijan and West Azerbaijan) in northwestern Iran from 2009 to 2017, as well as its relationship with environmental and geographical factors. The manuscript has a relevant theme, but needs an important review/organization in its content and writing.

-I suggest a comprehensive review of the English written in the manuscript (typographical / grammatical errors and scientific writing);

-Please describe clearly and comprehensively the main problem/object addressed in the manuscript;

-The introduction does not provide an entirely relevant description of the proposal and significance of the study. The problem is not significantly and concisely stated in the text;

-The methods needs to include some additional methodological details in the text (e.g., how morbidity data was extracted or made available; case definition; more information from the surveillance system responsible for the data, etc.), as well as a comprehensive and detailed description of all analyzes presented in the results;

-Overall, the results are not clearly presented and the interpretations and conclusions are not supported and justified by the results, but rather general statements. The limitations of this study are not presented in the text (e.g., coverage and quality of secondary data);

-The titles of figures and tables are not provided in the manuscript, and the tables were not included in the main file.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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PONE-D-19-35837R1

Spatial Autocorrelation and Epidemiological Survey of Visceral Leishmaniasis in an endemic area of Azerbaijan Region, Northwest of Iran

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Moradi-Asl,

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.

More specifically, please fully incorporate the two remaining comments made by reviewer 1 in the revised version of the manuscript (i.e. R1). Also, address the few editorial comments made in the ´Aditional Editor Comments´ space right after the signature field at the bottom of this message.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Aug 08 2020 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're 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.

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). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
• A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
• An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Albert Schriefer, M.D., Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

1. Introduction, line 43. I suggest adjusting ´there is a high correlation between the life cycle of the VL disease and the environmental factors involved in it ...´ to  ´there is a high correlation between the occurrence of the VL disease and the environmental factors involved in it ...´.
2. Methods, lines 111-114. Please, refer to table 1 here: ´A total of 19 climate variables were downloaded from the 111 Worldclime website (www.worldclime.com) with a resolution of 30 sec (�1 sq.km) and were used 112 along with an elevation variable at the same resolution to evaluate and determine the appropriate 113 ecological niches (Table 1)´.
3. Tables 2 and 3. Please, invert the tables. Titles are correct, but the corresponding tables have been inverted.
4. Table ´The results of T-test and Kruskal –walls test for incidence of VL ...´. In the cell ´<1000 -1150>´, I suggest substituting this label with either ´Lower than 1000 and higher than 1150´, or ´<1000 and >1150´.
5. Results, lines 175-176. Please, further clarify the sentence ´ the results of the investigation of the impact of all variables together on the model were precipitation seasonality (35.40%) and mean diurnal range (21.60%)´. As currently written it is confusing.
6. Results, line 176. Please, correct ´(Table 1and 3)´ to (Table 1)´.

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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: Partly

Reviewer #2: Partly

**********

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

**********

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: 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

Reviewer #2: No

**********

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: Dear Authors

Thank you for addressing most of the comments. Still I think two comments are not addressed:

1- Did you used the points of VL disease for Moran's analysis or considered the counties as the analysis units?

2- Fig 5 for the result of spatial auto-correlation should be replaced with a map resulted from this analysis. You can ask Arcmap to plot the map i this analysis.

Good luck

Reviewer #2: (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.

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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.]

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 PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.

Spatial Autocorrelation and Epidemiological Survey of Visceral Leishmaniasis in an endemic area of Azerbaijan Region, Northwest of Iran

PONE-D-19-35837R2

Dear Dr. Moradi-Asl,

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.

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Kind regards,

Albert Schriefer, M.D., Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments: