Risk factors for predicting mortality of COVID-19 patients: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Lan Yang; Jing Jin; Wenxin Luo; Yuncui Gan; Bojiang Chen; Weimin Li

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0243124

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionSeptember 25, 2020
27 Oct 2020 Decision Letter - Raffaele Serra, Editor PONE-D-20-30258 Risk factors for predicting mortality of COVID-19 patients : A systematic review and meta-analysis PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Li, 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. The reviewers have commented on your above paper. They have suggested that this manuscript be revised according to the reviewers suggestions and resubmitted. Provided you address the changes recommended, the manuscript will be accepted for publication Please submit your revised manuscript by Nov 29 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, Prof. Raffaele Serra, M.D., 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 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 2. Please attach a Supplemental file of the results of the quality assessment for each individual study assessed, reporting the outcome for each individual criteria considered. 3. Please include the date(s) on which you accessed the databases or records to obtain the data used in your study. 4. Please provide a citation for the MINORS score. 5.Thank you for stating the following in the Funding Section of your manuscript: [This work was supported by National Nature Science Foundation of China [grant 227 numbers 91859203 and 81871890] and Major Science and Technology Innovation 228 Project of Chengdu City [grant number 2020-YF08-00080-GX]] We note that you have provided funding information that is not currently declared in your Funding Statement. However, funding information should not appear in the Acknowledgments section or other areas of your manuscript. We will only publish funding information present in the Funding Statement section of the online submission form. Please remove any funding-related text from the manuscript and let us know how you would like to update your Funding Statement. Currently, your Funding Statement reads as follows: [The author(s) received no specific funding for this work.] Please include your amended statements within your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. 6. 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. Upon resubmission, please provide the following: The name of the colleague or the details of the professional service that edited your manuscript A copy of your manuscript showing your changes by either highlighting them or using track changes (uploaded as a supporting information file) A clean copy of the edited manuscript (uploaded as the new manuscript file) Additional Editor Comments (if provided): The reviewers have commented on your above paper. They have suggested that this manuscript be revised according to the reviewers suggestions and resubmitted. [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: Yes ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: 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 ****** 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 ****** 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 aimed to perform a systematic meta-analysis to summarize the clinical characteristics and laboratory test before treatment among COVID-19 patients 65 and identify the possible risk factors for mortality. The article is timely and novel and it is overall well structured and written. Nevertheless, I would improve the manuscript focusing also on cardiovascular disease that increases poor prognosis and related mortality. For this purpose read and cite the article by Ielapi N, et al. Cardiovascular disease as a biomarker for an increased risk of COVID-19 infection and related poor prognosis. Biomark Med. 2020 Jun;14(9):713-716. ****** 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 [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.0243124.r001
Revision 1
6 Nov 2020 Author Response Dear Editor-in-Chief and reviewers: Thank you for your letter and for the reviewers' comments concerning our manuscript entitled “Risk factors for predicting mortality of COVID-19 patients: A systematic review and meta-analysis”. All suggestions were very helpful for us to revise and improve our paper. We carefully studied these comments and made corrections that we hope meet with approval. The revised portions are marked with ‘Track changes’ in the manuscript. Here are my responses to the Editor-in-Chief’ comments. 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 Response: We have now re-formatted our paper carefully to meet PLOS ONE’s style requirements. 2. Please attach a Supplemental file of the results of the quality assessment for each individual study assessed, reporting the outcome for each individual criteria considered. Response: The results of the quality assessment for each individual study were presented in S1 Table. We have added S1 table in the revised version of our manuscript. We change the original “eTable 1” to “S2 Table” and the original “eTable 2” to “S3 Table”. We are sorry for making some mistakes in calculating the MINORS scores. After re-calculating all scores of enrolled studies, the MINORS score of Chen T(2020) was changed from 18 to 21, the MINORS score of Goicoechea M (2020) was changed from 21 to 18, and the MINORS score of Zhou F (2020) was changed from 18 to 21.(Page 8-10, Table 1) 3. Please include the date(s) on which you accessed the databases or records to obtain the data used in your study. Response: We conducted a systematic search in PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science and Embase to identify studies in patients with COVID-19 infection up to 4 June 2020. This was mentioned in “Materials and methods”-“Search strategy”. (Page 4, Line 64). 4. Please provide a citation for the MINORS score. Response: The citation for the MINORS score was provided as reference [3]. (Page 5, Line 88) Slim K, Nini E, Forestier D, Kwiatkowski F, Panis Y, Chipponi J. Methodological index for non-randomized studies (MINORS): development and validation of a new instrument. ANZ Journal of Surgery. 2003;73(9):712-6. 5.Thank you for stating the following in the Funding Section of your manuscript: [This work was supported by National Nature Science Foundation of China [grant 227 numbers 91859203 and 81871890] and Major Science and Technology Innovation 228 Project of Chengdu City [grant number 2020-YF08-00080-GX]] We note that you have provided funding information that is not currently declared in your Funding Statement. However, funding information should not appear in the Acknowledgments section or other areas of your manuscript. We will only publish funding information present in the Funding Statement section of the online submission form. Please remove any funding-related text from the manuscript and let us know how you would like to update your Funding Statement. Currently, your Funding Statement reads as follows: [The author(s) received no specific funding for this work.] Please include your amended statements within your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. Response: We have removed any funding-related text from the manuscript and add the information of funding in cover letter. 6. 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. Response: The full manuscript has been reviewed and edited by a professional scientific English editor. Here are my responses to the reviewers’ comments. Reviewer #1: The authors aimed to perform a systematic meta-analysis to summarize the clinical characteristics and laboratory test before treatment among COVID-19 patients 65 and identify the possible risk factors for mortality. The article is timely and novel and it is overall well structured and written. Nevertheless, I would improve the manuscript focusing also on cardiovascular disease that increases poor prognosis and related mortality. For this purpose read and cite the article by Ielapi N, et al. Cardiovascular disease as a biomarker for an increased risk of COVID-19 infection and related poor prognosis. Biomark Med. 2020 Jun;14(9):713-716. Response: Thank you for reviewing our manuscript and your advices were helpful. According to your suggestion about the impact of cardiovascular disease on COVID-19 infection and prognosis. We did analysis to detect the relationship between hypertension and chronic cardiac disease and mortality of COVID-19. The results showed that hypertension (OR= 2.94, 95%CI [2.39, 3.62], P<0.001) and chronic cardiac disease (OR= 3.89, 95%CI [2.65, 5.72], P<0.001), were also associated with increased mortality of COVID-19. The detail information was provided in the following table. 　 No. of the studies No. of the patients OR, 95%CI P-value Heterogeneity I2 P-value Hypertension 28 8939 2.94 [2.39, 3.62] <0.001 54.90% <0.001 CCD 17 3806 3.89 [2.65, 5.72] <0.001 53.40% 0.005 We appreciate the editor/reviewers' earnest work and hope that the corrections will make the revised manuscript acceptable for publication. Once again, thank you very much for your comments and suggestions, and we look forward to hearing from you. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0243124.r002
17 Nov 2020 Decision Letter - Raffaele Serra, Editor Risk factors for predicting mortality of COVID-19 patients : A systematic review and meta-analysis PONE-D-20-30258R1 Dear Dr. Li, 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, Prof. Raffaele Serra, M.D., Ph.D Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): amended manuscript is acceptable. Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0243124.r003
Formally Accepted
19 Nov 2020 Acceptance Letter - Raffaele Serra, Editor PONE-D-20-30258R1 Risk factors for predicting mortality of COVID-19 patients: A systematic review and meta-analysis Dear Dr. Li: 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 Prof. Raffaele Serra Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0243124.r004

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 .