Peer Review History
Original SubmissionNovember 21, 2020 |
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PONE-D-20-36699 Effect of prolonged sitting immobility on shear wave velocity of the lower leg muscles PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Aoki, 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. Although mainly descriptive your results might be of value to the community. Please submit your revised manuscript by Mar 26 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, Guy Cloutier, 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. 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 move it to the Methods section and delete it from any other section. Please ensure that your ethics statement is included in your manuscript, as the ethics statement entered into the online submission form will not be published alongside your manuscript. 3.We note that Figure 2a includes an image of a patient / participant in the study. As per the PLOS ONE policy (http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-human-subjects-research) on papers that include identifying, or potentially identifying, information, the individual(s) or parent(s)/guardian(s) must be informed of the terms of the PLOS open-access (CC-BY) license and provide specific permission for publication of these details under the terms of this license. Please download the Consent Form for Publication in a PLOS Journal (http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=8ce6/plos-consent-form-english.pdf). The signed consent form should not be submitted with the manuscript, but should be securely filed in the individual's case notes. Please amend the methods section and ethics statement of the manuscript to explicitly state that the patient/participant has provided consent for publication: “The individual in this manuscript has given written informed consent (as outlined in PLOS consent form) to publish these case details”. If you are unable to obtain consent from the subject of the photograph, you will need to remove the figure and any other textual identifying information or case descriptions for this individual. [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 Reviewer #3: Partly ********** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: 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 Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: No ********** 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: No Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: 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: General comments : This study assessed shear wave velocity of lower limb muscles (gastrocnemius, soleus and tibialis anterior muscles) at baseline, after prolonged sitting (60 min and 120 min) and in a leg-raised position. The study seems well-conducted with a sufficient sample size and an adequate methodology. However, the manuscript would benefit being reviewed by a professional proofreader/editor to improve the language. Specific comments: P4-5: Please describe the inclusion and exclusion criteria. The information about where and how the participants were recruited should be provided. The characteristics of the participants (Table 1) should be moved to the result section. The related statistics and the test used to assess the normality of the data should be detailed in the statistical section of the methodology. P5, L122: the number of participants should be in the participant section of the methodology or the results section. P5, L128: the reference to the Figure 1 is not related to the text “The temperature and humidity in the laboratory were maintained at 25°C and 30-40%, respectively”. P7, L167-168: Positioning of the probe on the gastrocnemius, soleus and tibialis anterior muscles. Which landmarks were used to establish the positioning of the probe (e.g. 30% and 50% of the leg). How was the muscle belly located? P7: Did the participants remain in the same position for the elastography measurements? It is not clear that the surface scanned was easily accessible for the evaluator according the image provided. P8: Surface electromyography. Can you further describe how the EMG data were managed during the entire testing period? Were the EMG traces visible for both the participants and the evaluator? Was a pre-established resting activity targeted on a screen for ensuring proper relaxation? P9, L235: Replace “the risk rate was set at” by “level of significance was set at” P 11 L283- 297: In the discussion, the values obtained should not be repeated. The results should rather be summarized and discussed according the current literature. P12, L33-335: Do you have any reference supporting this hypothesis? The authors should explain the hypothesized mechanisms responsible for the increase in shear wave velocity can with prolonged sitting and they should support their explanations with the literature. Reviewer #2: The reviewer has thoroughly reviewed the manuscript for scientific content, manuscript construction, and general impact. This study seems a sound one but needs to be redefined, especially in terms of novelty, hypothesis, and methodology. The main issues are listed below. Introduction The introduction section should be clear and hypothesis-driven to allow the readers to see the basis of the authors’ hypothesis. Although the hypothesis is stated in the manuscript, the reviewer cannot understand the rationale for the hypothesis. Additionally, in the introduction section, the authors should not exhaustively review the subject but need to provide relevant references. Namely, the authors should mention the literature on muscle conditions during a prolonged sitting. The authors consider that the clinical importance of the present study is related to compartment syndrome, it would be better to measure intramuscular pressure instead of shear wave velocity. Methods The authors report 3ρVs2 because they regarded the muscles as isotropic (Line 190-). However, this is wrong (although the authors are aware). The orientation of the ultrasound probe is unclear. As far as the reviewer see Figure 4, it seems that the probe was not aligned with the fascicle direction of the muscles. As the authors know, the probe orientation relative to fascicle direction affects the shear wave speed measured, leading to smaller shear wave velocity. In fact, the shear wave velocity reported in this paper is smaller than those in previous studies. The ICC in this study is smaller than that of previous studies (ICC > 0.9). The authors stated that no muscle contraction was observed to occur through EMG recording. Please explain in more detail what value the authors determined to be no muscle contractions. Discussion The discussion section needs to reflect what the authors found, how it relates to the literature, and then what it means clinically or physiologically. Each paragraph should be logical in sequence as at present; it is a bit hard to follow. Further, the discussion is qualitative but not quantitative. Conclusion Intramuscular pressure was not directly measured in this paper. Thus, the current conclusion is not based on the data of the present study. Reviewer #3: PONE-D-20-36699 This study brings descriptive data to the literature on the effect of prolonged sitting on lower limb muscle shear wave velocity (i.e., muscle stiffness under known hypotheses of localized homogeneous, isotropic and purely linear elastic property, which oversimplify the muscle rheology but is of common use in the field). If the angle of insonification with respect to the muscle long axis is defined, this can bring informative data to the literature. The study protocol is quite simple and the sample size is limited in term of number and population characteristics; only normal young male volunteers were scanned. EMG verification of the absence of muscle contraction, which is an important confounder, was made to improve robustness of reported results. Overall, even though it is mainly a descriptive study with no clear rationale or hypothesis, reported results might be of value to design future studies on pathological cohorts of patients with musculoskeletal disorders. A strong effort in restructuring the paper is required, many sections are not at the right place into the manuscript and repetitions are noticed. Please use standard scientific report guidelines. 1) By considering the limited sample size, I would add “a proof-of-concept study” at the end of the title. 2) Abstract, L38-39: There is repetitive information on statistics. 3) Introduction, L76: The concept of anisotropic modulus is confusing. L73 is giving the Young’s modulus estimate for a linear, isotropic and purely elastic material, whereas the equation of L76 is simply the shear modulus under same hypotheses. There is no anisotropic modulus leading to this simplified equation, as far as I know. 4) L87: The concept of compartmental pressure increase is indeed of interest to interpret the dataset as the boundary condition imposed by the internal pressure on muscles changes the non-linear strain-stress relation of most biological tissues. Any pre-compressed tissue will result in a displacement of the measured elasticity on the non-linear strain-stress curve and thus will lead to a different estimate of the Young’s modulus given by the equation on L73. This is a limitation of shear wave elastography imaging as linear elasticity is assumed. It would be important to bring basic tissue mechanics concepts into your discussion to avoid misleading interpretation. 5) L97: Your hypothesis is empty and not based on strong rationales. This should be improved. Why prolonged sitting would change muscle stiffness? 6) Table 1 is useless and should be removed. 7) L159: “precision”. 8) L186 and 188: What is a “shear wave verbosity” and what is “a constant condition”? 9) L203: What is the output of the Web-1000 system? 10) Discussion: Remove all repetitions on reported results, this is useless. 11) L309 and elsewhere: Correct “verbosity”. 12) L315: Are you sure about this curious hypothesis? How the hydrostatic pressure applied on muscles can be induced by the venous low pressure system of typically a few mmHg? This sounds curious to me. 13) L317: You are overstretching the interpretation of your results since you did not measure the intramuscular pressure; consequently you cannot say that this is “in accordance with”. 14) L327: The muscle length has certainly nothing to do with shear wave speed; you are likely referring to the muscle stretching. 15) L328: “nature of muscle”, can you be more descriptive and support your hypothesis based on known histopathology analysis? 16) L330: Here again, verify your hypothesis about venous pressure and impact on muscle. Swelling of muscle versus direct impact of venous pressure are likely different mechanisms. L332: Even though you are citing the literature, more rationale should be given on how an intravenous pressure of typical < 10 mmHg would compress the muscle enough to change the strain-stress non-linear elasticity behavior. 17) L342: Indeed assessing the venous system with Doppler flow and B-mode diameter measurements would have helped supporting your hypothesis; otherwise your study is mainly descriptive. An impedance plethysmography system would also help assessing electrolyte volume (i.e., blood volume and interstitial inter-compartment water). 18) Conclusion: Here again you are overstretching the interpretation of your results; no internal pressure has been reported. 19) L391: “evacuation in the car”, what do you mean? ********** 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 Reviewer #2: No Reviewer #3: 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 |
PONE-D-20-36699R1 Effect of prolonged sitting immobility on shear wave velocity of the lower leg muscles in healthy adults: a proof-of-concept study PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Aoki, 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. ============================== ACADEMIC EDITOR: I also reviewed your responses and I agree with Reviewer #3, a new round of revision with clear responses to all comments and associated changes into the manuscript should be provided. Take all advises given by this reviewer for not further delaying the decision. ============================== Please submit your revised manuscript by May 24 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. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols. We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Guy Cloutier, Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] 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 #3: (No Response) ********** 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 #3: Partly ********** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #3: 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 #3: No ********** 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 #3: No ********** 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 #3: Overall, your responses to reviewers were badly formulated and it was very difficult to identify if all comments were properly answered. Each reviewer comment should be followed by a clear section indicating your response (e.g., RESPONSE TO COMMENT #1, RESPONSE TO COMMENT #2, etc ...). Also a different color code should be used for each reviewer to allow facilitating identifying changes made in the text. I could notice again the overstretching of the conclusion: "It has been reported that the change in the shear wave velocity was proportional to the internal pressure of the leg muscle compartment", you did not measure any internal pressure! Some typos were also noticed into changes made in the revised document. No decision can be made unless a new "responses to reviewers" document is made with clear color-coded changes. ********** 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 #3: 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 2 |
Effect of prolonged sitting immobility on shear wave velocity of the lower leg muscles in healthy adults: a proof-of-concept study PONE-D-20-36699R2 Dear Dr. Aoki, 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, Guy Cloutier, Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: |
Formally Accepted |
PONE-D-20-36699R2 Effect of prolonged sitting immobility on shear wave velocity of the lower leg muscles in healthy adults: a proof-of-concept study Dear Dr. Aoki: 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. Guy Cloutier Academic Editor PLOS ONE |
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