Peer Review History

Original SubmissionOctober 7, 2020
Decision Letter - Tatsuo Kanda, Editor

PONE-D-20-31507

Sulfonylureas may be useful for glycemic management in patients with diabetes and liver cirrhosis

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Chih-Cheng Hsu,

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Tatsuo Kanda, M.D., Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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[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

Reviewer #2: No

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: I Don't Know

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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

Reviewer #2: Yes

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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: 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: Authors reported SU use in patients with T2DM and compensated cirrhosis was associated with lower risks of all-cause mortality and major cardiovascular events. There are no major revisions required. Minor revisions required are as follows:

#1: Full spelling is required only for the first appearance of the abbreviation. Please correct the 113th, 123th, 129th, 131st, 132nd, 133rd, 137th, 192nd, 193rd, 226th, 232nd, 247th, 272nd, and 273rd line.

#2: Page 17, line 3: the correct one is ‘‘HCC’’, not ‘‘Hepatocellular’’.

Reviewer #2: #1 The authors defined decompensated liver cirrhosis as LC with variceal bleeding, ascites, encephalopathy, or jaundice. Under this definition, patients with compensated LC includes wide ranges of liver function. The information of liver function such as Child-Pugh score or ALBI grade is necessary.

#2 Patients with liver cirrhosis has a risk of hypoglycemia due to dysfunction in gluconeogenesis and shortage of glycogen. The authors concluded that the usage of SUs was not associated with sever hypoglycemia. The authors should mention the risk of the hypoglycemia due to LC itself in the Discusion.

#3 Space may be necessary in line 89 Page 6 (between in and 2000), line 182 Page 11 (between 7915 and patients).

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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.

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Reviewer #1: Yes: Hidehiro Kamezaki

Reviewer #2: No

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Revision 1

Tatsuo Kanda, M.D., Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

November 2, 2020

Dear Prof. Tatsuo Kanda:

Re: Document reference No. PONE-D-20-31507

Please find attached a revised version of our document “Sulfonylureas may be useful for glycemic management in patients with diabetes and liver cirrhosis”. We would like to resubmit for publication as an original article in PLOS ONE.

Your comments and those of the reviewers were highly insightful and enabled us to improve the quality of our document. In the following pages are our responses to each comment from the reviewer(s) as well as your own comments.

Revisions in the text are shown in yellow highlights. We hope that our revisions to the document combined with our accompanying responses will be sufficient to render our document suitable for publication in PLOS ONE.

We look forward to hearing from you soon.

Yours sincerely,

Chih-Cheng Hsu, MD, DrPH

Institute of Population Health Sciences, National Health Research Institutes

Tel.: +886 37 246166 #36336

Fax: +886 37 586463

E-Mail: cch@nhri.edu.tw

Address: 35 Keyan Road, Zhunan, Miaoli County 35053, Taiwan

Responses to the comments of Editor

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: Thank you for your encouragement! We will comply with the style requirement of PLOS ONE.

2. We note that you have indicated that data from this study are available upon request. PLOS only allows data to be available upon request if there are legal or ethical restrictions on sharing data publicly. For information on unacceptable data access restrictions, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-unacceptable-data-access-restrictions. In your revised cover letter, please address the following prompts:

a) If there are ethical or legal restrictions on sharing a de-identified data set, please explain them in detail (e.g., data contain potentially identifying or sensitive patient information) and who has imposed them (e.g., an ethics committee). Please also provide contact information for a data access committee, ethics committee, or other institutional body to which data requests may be sent.

b) If there are no restrictions, please upload the minimal anonymized data set necessary to replicate your study findings as either Supporting Information files or to a stable, public repository and provide us with the relevant URLs, DOIs, or accession numbers. Please see http://www.bmj.com/content/340/bmj.c181.long for guidelines on how to de-identify and prepare clinical data for publication. For a list of acceptable repositories, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-recommended-repositories.

We will update your Data Availability statement on your behalf to reflect the information you provide.

Response: Data of this study are available from the National Health Insurance Research Database (NHIRD) published by Taiwan National Health Insurance (NHI) Administration. The data utilized in this study cannot be made available in the paper, the supplemental files, or in a public repository due to the ‘‘Personal Information Protection Act’’ executed by Taiwan government starting from 2012. Requests for data can be sent as a formal proposal to the NHIRD Office (https://dep.mohw.gov.tw/DOS/cp-2516-3591-113.html) or by email to stsung@mohw.gov.tw.

3. PLOS requires an ORCID iD for the corresponding author in Editorial Manager on papers submitted after December 6th, 2016. Please ensure that you have an ORCID iD and that it is validated in Editorial Manager. To do this, go to ‘Update my Information’ (in the upper left-hand corner of the main menu), and click on the Fetch/Validate link next to the ORCID field. This will take you to the ORCID site and allow you to create a new iD or authenticate a pre-existing iD in Editorial Manager. Please see the following video for instructions on linking an ORCID iD to your Editorial Manager account: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xcclfuvtxQ

Response: Yes, we have ORCID iDs and that they are validated in Editorial Manager.

4. Your ethics statement should only appear in the Methods section of your manuscript. If your ethics statement is written in any section besides the Methods, please delete it from any other section.

Response: Thanks! We have deleted the ethics statement written in other section besides the Methods.

Responses to the comments of Reviewer #1

1. Authors reported SU use in patients with T2DM and compensated cirrhosis was associated with lower risks of all-cause mortality and major cardiovascular events. There are no major revisions required. Minor revisions required are as follows:

#1: Full spelling is required only for the first appearance of the abbreviation. Please correct the 113th, 123th, 129th, 131st, 132nd, 133rd, 137th, 192nd, 193rd, 226th, 232nd, 247th, 272nd, and 273rd line.

Response: Thank you for careful reading of our manuscript! We have corrected the wrong spellings in these areas.

2. Page 17, line 3: the correct one is ‘‘HCC’’, not ‘‘Hepatocellular’’.

Response: Thanks! We have corrected this error on page 17.

Responses to the comments of Reviewer #2

1. The authors defined decompensated liver cirrhosis as LC with variceal bleeding, ascites,

encephalopathy, or jaundice. Under this definition, patients with compensated LC includes wide ranges of liver function. The information of liver function such as Child-Pugh score or ALBI grade is necessary.

Response: We are so sorry that our administrative dataset is lack of blood biochemical test results. Therefore, we can’t calculate the Child-Pugh scores and albumin-bilirubin (ALBI) grade to evaluate the severity of liver dysfunction. We have described this limitation of our study on page 25-26 as “It also has no information on blood biochemical and hemoglobin A1C results. Therefore, we can’t calculate the Child-Pugh scores and albumin-bilirubin (ALBI) grade to evaluate the severity of liver dysfunction [32] and the treatment situation of T2DM”.

2. Patients with liver cirrhosis has a risk of hypoglycemia due to dysfunction in gluconeogenesis and shortage of glycogen. The authors concluded that the usage of SUs was not associated with sever hypoglycemia. The authors should mention the risk of the hypoglycemia due to LC itself in the Discussion.

Response: Thank you so much for this important suggestion. We have described the risk of hypoglycemia due to liver cirrhosis on page 25 as” Patients with liver cirrhosis may have dysfunction in gluconeogenesis and shortage of glycogen storage, reduced metabolism of antidiabetic drugs, impaired glucagon catabolism and increased risk of hypoglycemia [31]”.

3. Space may be necessary in line 89 Page 6 (between in and 2000), line 182 Page 11 (between 7915 and patients).

Response: Thanks! We have corrected these errors.

Decision Letter - Tatsuo Kanda, Editor

Sulfonylureas may be useful for glycemic management in patients with diabetes and liver cirrhosis

PONE-D-20-31507R1

Dear Dr. Chih-Cheng Hsu,

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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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,

Tatsuo Kanda, M.D., Ph.D.

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

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: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: I Don't Know

**********

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: 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: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: Thank you for submitting the revise. I think there are no more major revisions required in the manuscript.

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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: Yes: Hidehiro Kamezaki

Reviewer #2: No

Formally Accepted
Acceptance Letter - Tatsuo Kanda, Editor

PONE-D-20-31507R1

Sulfonylureas may be useful for glycemic management in patients with diabetes and liver cirrhosis

Dear Dr. Hsu:

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. Tatsuo Kanda

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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