PONE-D-20-25601

Carriage rates and antimicrobial sensitivity of pneumococci in the upper respiratory tract of children less than ten years old, in a north Indian rural community

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr.Bimal Kumar Das 

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Reviewers' comments:

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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

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

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Reviewer #1: Yes

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Reviewer #1: 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: The title: Carriage rates and antimicrobial sensitivity of pneumococci in the upper respiratory tract

2 of children less than ten years old, in a north Indian rural community

This topic is an important topic indicating pneumococcal resistance in children less than ten years with high risk to moderate risk of pneumococcal infections and mostly with high resistance rates for rural areas. The manuscript should have the following points for corrections

reviewer points:

1. Follow the author instructions regarding abstract writing, it should be in one paragraph

2. Line 28: anti-microbial, no need for the dash

3. again in the abstract methods, it is stated that you took only nasal swabs from children less than one year, but the rest children both nasal and throat, but in the results (nasal/throat for both), please explain

4. lines 34, 35 and 36: (with 6B/C, 19A, 19F, 23F, 35A/B/C, 15B, 14 and 11A/C/D

35 accounting for 50%). You should indicate the exact percentage of each serotype from the highest to the lowest, showing the importance of each and give the reader an idea about the coverage of the pneumococcal conjugate vaccines, and this may also indicate or show the importance of the future PCVs PCV15 or PCV20.

5. Line 37 in the abstract, it says less than 10% penicillin intermediate resistance: Please indicate the exact resistance rates and also high grade resistance for the penicillin

6. The introduction is mainly talking about India and is short, it needs extension and talk more internationally, especially in countries similar to India

7. line 66, same anti-microbial, no need for the dash

8. The study is about Low and Upper RI, were there any pneumonia cases for the children diagnosed?

9. In line 79. change the sentence starting with we, since it is not scientifically correct

10. lines 91-93: Is there any importance of including this statement?

11. Line 103: (for testing for), here English revision

12. Line 104: be sure to make all CO2 written the same in the manuscript (the number 2 should be low script)

13. make sure there are no double spaces between words in all of the manuscript, look at line 119.

14. line 127, the reference was put after the point (wrong)

15. lines 124-130: You have mentioned in the abstract penicillin intermediate resistance and even in line 199 about penicillin resistance, but penicillin was not mentioned in the methods in this paragraph

16. line 132: What is s/he?

17. I do not encourage you to write we analyzed, we considered, we used, we also detected, We identified...etc. This is not preferable in the manuscripts

18. lines 153-154: This included 162 specimens collected within 14 days of last specimen collection from the same child. Please clarify 162 samples from the same child?

19. Indicate the serotypes in the figure with PCV serotypes or not

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Reviewer #1: No

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Carriage rates and antimicrobial sensitivity of pneumococci in the upper respiratory tract of children less than ten years old, in a north Indian rural community

PONE-D-20-25601R1

Dear Dr. Bimal Kumar Das, 

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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Kind regards,

Silvia Ricci

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

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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

**********

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

**********

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

**********

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

**********

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: The reviewer have checked all the points raised and were answered and the responses meet formatting specifications.

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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: No