Peer Review History
| Original SubmissionAugust 19, 2020 |
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PONE-D-20-26043 Effect of COvid-19 on mental health in Syrian and Turkish maintenance HemoDialysis patients: COST-HD study PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Sakaci, 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. We apologize for the delay in our response. We have had some difficulties with the reviewers of this work and that is the reason why I have reviewed the work mainly on my own. You will find my comments below. Please submit your revised manuscript by Jan 09 2021 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:
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, Jose A. Muñoz-Moreno, 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 2.) Please amend your current ethics statement to address the following concerns: Please explain why written consent was not obtained, how you recorded/documented participant consent, and if the ethics committees/IRBs approved this consent procedure. 3) In your ethics statement in the Methods section and in the online submission form, please provide additional information about the retrospective demographic data used in your study. Specifically, please ensure that you have discussed whether all data were fully anonymized before you accessed them and/or whether the IRB or ethics committee waived the requirement for informed consent. If patients provided informed written consent to have data from their medical records used in research, please include this information. 4.) Please include the date(s) on which you accessed the databases or records to obtain the retrospective demographic data used in your study. 5.) We note that you have stated that you will provide repository information for your data at acceptance. Should your manuscript be accepted for publication, we will hold it until you provide the relevant accession numbers or DOIs necessary to access your data. If you wish to make changes to your Data Availability statement, please describe these changes in your cover letter and we will update your Data Availability statement to reflect the information you provide. Comments to Authors 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 ********** 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 tittle should not mention "mental health", since the study is only investigating depressive symptoms and many other dimensions of mental health are not addressed. - I would also recommend including in the tittle "refugees", since this is a key point of the study. - It is mentioned that pneumonia of unknown cause was detected on 31 December 2019, but it was reported on December 30th: https://promedmail.org/promed-post/?id=6864153 - Importantly, all the manuscript refers to "depression". But this work did not investigate depression rigorously, but a screening of depressive symptoms. Depression should be thoroughly diagnosed by a clinical interview, or alternatively, in the case of research setting, with more complete methodology. BDI is merely a method to measure depressive symptoms, with relevant limitations in fact. Authors should be really cautious on this point. - In Abstract, it is reported that demographic and clinical data were collected from patients' files; what type of files? This feature should be clarified. Adapt also in the manuscript (Methods). - Which version of BDI was used? An appropriate reference should be cited the first time it is mentioned in text. - In Abstract, when BDI means are reported, the numbers in parenthesis are not defined. - In Abstract, the last sentence in Results should clarify whether those factors were found in the total sample or only in one of the groups. - In Abstract, Conclusions, it is stated that HD patients were affected by the pandemic, but this work did not investigate any aspect about impact of COVID-19 specifically. The study was cross-sectional, with no prospective data, therefore authors were not allowed to conclude any information on the affectation by the pandemic. If there is any reference of some work previously published in that regard, it could be provided. - Introduction, line 73, it is stated that depression can be diagnosed by questionnaires. Again, depression should be carefully diagnosed with the help of questionaries, alongside a proper psychiatric interview. In fact, the citation provided in the text is referring to screening for depression very clearly. - Introduction, line 75, "Syrian civil" is missing a word. - In the Introduction, allusions to impact of the pandemic are made, but, again, the study essentially offers a picture of the depressive symptoms. - Methods, line 82, the date should be adapted to English format. Importantly, all dates provided in the Abstract and manuscript should be adapted as well. - Methods, line 96, "was accepted as suspicion of depression". - Results, line 121, "due to following". - Results, line 122, "COVID-19". - Results, line 131, sentence should be rephrased. - Results, line 133, "depression" should be changed to "depressive symptoms." Also in in the Abstract and all along the manuscript. - 50.7% of the Turkish cohort were women, 18.2% in the Syrian cohort (p=0.014). And depressive symptoms were more prevalent in the Syrian population (p=0.03). However, when BDI outcomes were stratified according to a score of 14, the proportion of female patients did not differ. This result should be confirmed. - In Results, firstly, a description of the cohorts is offered; later, both groups are joined to study the factors related to the existence of suspicion of depression (BDI score of 14); and finally, again, groups are separated to offer the difference in BDI means according to groups. The third part should be provided after the first one, and factors related to suspicion of depression should be the last one. In fact, that is the order followed in the Abstract. - Discussion, line 153, "male, although." - Discussion, line 153, 54% is with no decimal, and 51.6% include it. - The paragraph concerning the description of BDI and its potential usefulness is really scarce. Other advantages should be added, and, importantly, its main limitations; for example, that it is widely biased by organic symptoms, or that the original BDI version has been updated by BDI-II years ago. - Outcomes on BDI could be presented as 2 subscales (cognitive-affective and somatic-performance). Because only one questionnaire has been applied in the study, incorporating this information to the manuscript could definitively offer more strength to the work. - Proportion of women was significantly higher in the Syrian group compared to the Turkish group. Depressive symptoms were also higher in the same group. This could be perfectly attributed then to commonly higher rates of depressive status in the general population, or in refugee women as well. This point should be properly justified and argued in Discussion. - In Discussion, alongside the general recommendation to provide mental support to Syrian refugees, other specific suggestions could be made. In my opinion, this part of the Discussion is truly important, since authors should use their knowledge and experience to state clearly specific interventions that could be delivered and implemented. - Table 1: Kt/V mean for all patients, there is a mistake in the decimal. - Table 1: one decimal, two, or three for data shown? This is also important for the Abstract and along the manuscript. - Figure 1: format mistakes should be corrected. - Figure 1, title: "Details of the patient cohort." - Figure 2: p value could be included in the graph. - Finally, and very importantly, English grammar and style should be revised for all the text. ********** 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. |
| Revision 1 |
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Frequency of depressive symptoms in Syrian refugees and Turkish maintenance hemodialysis patients during COVID-19 pandemic PONE-D-20-26043R1 Dear Dr. Sakaci, 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, Jose A. Muñoz-Moreno, Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE |
| Formally Accepted |
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PONE-D-20-26043R1 Frequency of depressive symptoms in Syrian refugees and Turkish maintenance hemodialysis patients during COVID-19 pandemic Dear Dr. Sakaci: 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. Jose A. Muñoz-Moreno Academic Editor PLOS ONE |
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