Association between chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and occupational exposures: A hospital based quantitative cross-sectional study among the Bangladeshi population

Ahmed Faisal Sumit; Anindya Das; Ishtiaq Hossain Miraj; Debasish Bhowmick

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0239602

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionJune 1, 2020
16 Jul 2020 Decision Letter - Christophe Leroyer, Editor PONE-D-20-16525 Association between chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and occupational exposures: A hospital based quantitative cross-sectional study among the Bangladeshi population. PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Sumit, 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. ============================== ACADEMIC EDITOR: Please insert comments here and delete this placeholder text when finished. Be sure to: Indicate which changes you require for acceptance versus which changes you recommend Address any conflicts between the reviews so that it's clear which advice the authors should follow Provide specific feedback from your evaluation of the manuscript Please ensure that your decision is justified on PLOS ONE’s publication criteria and not, for example, on novelty or perceived impact. ============================== Please submit your revised manuscript by september 1st. 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, Christophe Leroyer 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 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf 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 ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes 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: The authors examine the relation between occupational exposures and COPD in a respiratory clinic based population in Bangladesh. They find a higher rate of COPD in Occupationally exposed population. Major comments: As all of the patients were being evaluated for respiratory problems, the authors need to be very cautious in how these results are presented and interpreted. For example- what diagnoses did the patients in the control group actually have? Also- the authors should present the proportion of patients with restriction ( normal ratio and low FEV1)- As I suspect there would be a high proportion of patients with this abnormality. Was pre bronchodilator lung function assessed? This might be important and including an assessment of bronchodilator responsiveness would be helpful. Reviewer #2: The authors present original results concerning the share of professional origin in the etiology of COPD in Bangladesh. The text is well written apart from 2 minimal mistakes. The document is understandable and meets the criteria of a good scientific article. The publication is original and will allow to deepen later among the trades found, the pathogens at the origin of these respiratory diseases. ****** 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: Yes: David Mannino Reviewer #2: Yes:** DEWITTE, J.D. [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. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0239602.r001
Revision 1
22 Aug 2020 Author Response Dear Respected Reviewers, Many thanks for reviewing our paper. We really appreciate that you gave us response in such a short time. We have edited the manuscript according to your suggestions. We are grateful enough to receive the inputs you both have given for our manuscript. We strongly believe that your inputs will help us improving the quality of our manuscript substantially. Please find the responses here: Response to Reviewers' Comments Reviewer 1 comment: 1. As all of the patients were being evaluated for respiratory problems, the authors need to be very cautious in how these results are presented and interpreted. For example- what diagnoses did the patients in the control group actually have? Response: Initially, all the control participants were examined by registered physician after complaining about respiratory problems. They all were confirmly diagnosed without COPD based on the spirometry results that was FEV1/FVC>0.70, and FEV1% ≥ 80 predicted. Based on the suggestions by registered physician, some of the control participants were also undergoing other tests like chest x-ray, serum IgE test, blood eosinophil count, etc, to confirm the diagnosis of asthma, bronchitis, emphysema, restrictive problems and/or other respiratory diseases. We have excluded those control participants who had been diagnosed with asthma, chronic bronchitis, and/or emphysema by registered physician during the time of study or if they had past history of these diseases. This information has been added in the manuscript now. We have not excluded control participants if they had been diagnosed with restrictive problems. Besides, control participants with doctor diagnosed allergic rhinitis, wheezing, mild/chronic cough, morning phlegm, dyspnoea were also included in our study. However, majority of the control participants were diagnosed as normal by registered physician. In our study we have only assessed self-reported respiratory symptoms of the participants (“Table 1”) rather than registered physician diagnosed respiratory diseases since we found majority of the control participants were diagnosed as normal by registered physician. 2. Also- the authors should present the proportion of patients with restriction (normal ratio and low FEV1)- As I suspect there would be a high proportion of patients with this abnormality. Response: According to your suggestion, we have included the proportion of control participants with restriction (normal ratio, but FVC<80% predicted) according to GOLD criteria. 3. Was pre bronchodilator lung function assessed? This might be important and including an assessment of bronchodilator responsiveness would be helpful. Response: According to your suggestion, we have included pre bronchodilator response data in our manuscript. Since we excluded all control participants who have shown positive bronchodilator response due to the suspect of asthma, bronchodilator response was shown only for the COPD participants. Reviewer 2 comment: The text is well written apart from 2 minimal mistakes. Response: We have addressed short grammatical mistakes and corrected accordingly. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Resonse to Reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0239602.r002
3 Sep 2020 Decision Letter - Christophe Leroyer, Editor PONE-D-20-16525R1 Association between chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and occupational exposures: A hospital based quantitative cross-sectional study among the Bangladeshi population. PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Sumit, 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. ============================== ACADEMIC EDITOR: My comment refers to the discussion section: "The association between occupational exposure and bronchodilator response among the COPD 300 participants were also assessed in our study. Here, similar to earlier study [34], our study showed that 301 12-20% of COPD participants exhibited positive bronchodilator response, although the association was 302 not significant when compared to occupational exposure. Our finding was in contrast with previous 303 study showing the significant association between %FEV1 reversibility with occupational exposure 304 among the COPD participants [23]. However, such assessment was performed only based on the 305 increase of average %FEV1 predicted values among the exposed group rather than on positive 306 bronchodilator response." The last sentence is unclear to me: do you refer to your study or to the previous one ? many thnaks to elucidate this point ============================== Please submit your revised manuscript by Oct 18 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, Christophe Leroyer Academic Editor PLOS ONE [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] [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. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0239602.r003
Revision 2
9 Sep 2020 Author Response Reviewer comment: The association between occupational exposure and bronchodilator response among the COPD participants were also assessed in our study. Here, similar to earlier study [34], our study showed that 12-20% of COPD participants exhibited positive bronchodilator response, although the association was not significant when compared to occupational exposure. Our finding was in contrast with previous study showing the significant association between %FEV1 reversibility with occupational exposure among the COPD participants [23]. However, such assessment was performed only based on the increase of average %FEV1 predicted values among the exposed group rather than on positive bronchodilator response." The last sentence is unclear to me: do you refer to your study or to the previous one? Response: The last sentence refers to previous study and we have added this in our manuscript as follow: “However, such assessment in the previous study [23] was performed only based on the increase of average %FEV1 predicted values among the exposed group rather than on positive bronchodilator response.” Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Resonse to Reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0239602.r004
10 Sep 2020 Decision Letter - Christophe Leroyer, Editor Association between chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and occupational exposures: A hospital based quantitative cross-sectional study among the Bangladeshi population. PONE-D-20-16525R2 Dear Dr. Sumit, 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. An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. 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 help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- 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. Kind regards, Christophe Leroyer Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0239602.r005
Formally Accepted
14 Sep 2020 Acceptance Letter - Christophe Leroyer, Editor PONE-D-20-16525R2 Association between chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and occupational exposures: A hospital based quantitative cross-sectional study among the Bangladeshi population. Dear Dr. Sumit: 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. If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Dr. Christophe Leroyer Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0239602.r006

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