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PONE-D-20-15259

Reliability of dried blood spot (DBS) cards in antibody measurement: a systematic review

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr.Fatimah Amini

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PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

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Comments to the Author

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: N/A

Reviewer #2: N/A

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

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Reviewer #1: The present study aims to assess the evidence for the use of DBS to accurately measure

antibody concentrations from natural exposure and vaccination. The data is well presented, but some issues should be answered:

- The period of study collection was until April 2019, more than 1 year ago. I recommend to make a new search to include new data.

- Few key words were used to search these papers. It would be interesting to include other synonyms. For example, there are several papers used for DBS collection and not only Guthrie card.

- It was not clear why 16 papers were irrelevant to include in the qualitative analysis.

Reviewer #2: The article by Amini et al, is a systematic review describing the use of dried blood spot cards to measure antibody responses against viral infections. The review is well written and has merit for publication as Dried body fluid spots is an easy and convenient means for diagnostic purposes and it gives access to many areas of the world with limited resources for sample collection and storage.

The reviewer feels that “dried blood spot” on the title should be more precise as dried spot on paper or dried body fluid spot as DBS often refers to whole blood.

The introduction is quite informative and exhaustive however the missing element is the use of such sample vehicle for the follow up of viral load during infection (lines 76...). Plethora of studies have been published such (ayele et al/ DOI: 10.1128/JCM.01919-06, Mwaba et al/ DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(03)15103-3 , Brambilla et al/ DOI: 10.1128/jcm.41.5.1888-1893.2003 , Cassol et al/ DOI: 10.1385/0-89603-369-4:139 to name a few.)

In the results section lines 148- 152, the reader would find it easier if this section is expanded with a better description of the figure 1.

Although the review is of great importance for the field and is broad and sound, covering the antibody recovery from dried spot against several infections, it would be stronger if a meta-analysis was performed. The authors provide some explanation as of why that is not done. Can the authors comment whether analysis on individual pathogens is possible?

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Reliability of dried blood spot (DBS) cards in antibody measurement: a systematic review

PONE-D-20-15259R1

Dear Dr. Amini,

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.

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Kind regards,

William Anderson Paxton, PhD, DIC

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

All points have been adequately addressed

Reviewers' comments: