Peer Review History
Original SubmissionDecember 27, 2020 |
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PONE-D-20-40657 Frequency, timing and risk factors for primary maternal cytomegalovirus infection during pregnancy in Quebec. PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Boucoiran, 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. Your manuscript has been evaluated by two expert reviewers whose comments are appended below. In general, they felt the paper was well written, but attention to several details is necessary in order for the manuscript to be publishable. In particular, the figures require legends and axis labels and tables require more clarification, as noted by both reviewers. In addition, reviewer #2 asks for the inclusion of primary data from the IgG and IgM tests, and I agree that these data are necessary to better analyze and contextualize the results. Please address all of the reviewer comments below in your rebuttal letter when you submit the revised manuscript. Please submit your revised manuscript by Mar 29 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:
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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.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). 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Please see our Supporting Information guidelines for more information: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/supporting-information. [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: Yes ********** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: 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: No Reviewer #2: 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 Reviewer #2: 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: In the here presented manuscript by Balegamire et al. the authors examine the seroprevalence of expecting mothers in Montréal and compare their serostatus in the first trimester to their serostatus at delivery to determine the prevalence of primary maternal CMV infection during pregnancy. This data can be used to infer the number of congenital CMV infections and by that the number of newborns with potentially lifelong sequelae in the studied target population. The presented study is well written and the authors present their data overall in a very nice and understandable manner. The conclusions of the manuscript are fully in-line with the presented results and the authors do discuss the limitations of their approach and studied group of individuals. Furthermore, this data clearly points out that there is a sizeable vulnerable population of women of childbearing age in Montréal and the detection of primary infections in CMV negative expecting mothers is a clear indication that some of these infection will results in affected children that will required follow up care, potentially for the rest of their lives. Nevertheless, it has to be stated that the presented results are not entirely novel as similar data resulting in similar conclusion have been generated previously by multiple groups around the globe. Yet, the presented study is scientifically sound and might be of interest to researchers and physicians in the field and should be deemed worth publishing. There are a few minor corrections the authors should make to the manuscript before publication to help the reader better understand the presented results. 1) For Table 1 it might be helpful if the authors could explain in the text or the materials and methods section what their abbreviations on top of each row mean and what the difference between their unadjusted and adjusted analysis is. 2) Similarly, for table 2 further explanations on what the rate and what the unadjusted rate is are needed. Also, there are * and ** after Rate and Unadjusted RR, but I can’t find what these asterisks refer to. 3) I can’t find figure legends. Figure 1 is probably fine, but figure 2 and 3 might benefit from some figure legends explaining what is shown. 4) There are some formatting issue with missing gaps or additional full stops in lines 135, 201, 214, 222, 224 and 232 Reviewer #2: To the authors of PONE-D-20-40657 SF Balegamire et al submitted a manuscript entiteled Frequency, timing and risk factors for primary maternal cytomegalovirus infection during pregnancy in Quebec. To PLOS One. The authors report on CMV seroprevalence in the first trimester (T1) in pregnancy and risk factors for the rate of CMV primary infection in a cohort of Caucasian ethnicity in the Quebec Region. In a retrospective study using cryopreserved serum samples of the “Grossesse en Sante de Quebec” in total N=7855 pregnant women were included. About half of this cohort were excluded (?, N=3744). From the remaining 4111 participants data from T1 and T3 (third trimester) were available, to observe potential seroconversion of seronegative pregnant women from T1 to T3. Seroconversion was defined by conversion from CMV IgG negative to CMV IgG positive. In T1, 3146 individuals were CMV seronegative and in T3, 28 cases of maternal seroconversions could be documented. This correlates with 0,9% of maternal seroconversion. In contrast, in the T1 seropositive cohort of 965 pregnant women, 113 showed CMV IgG+ IgM+, which were attributed to “possible recent infection”. In total, 104 pregnant women were infected latently and 4 primary infections of the CMV IgG+ IgM+ cohort were defined by low CMV IgG avidity. Multivariate analysis revealed parity, ethnicity and country of birth as risk factors. The results are discussed in detail and the paper contributes seroepidemiological data of an additional cohort of high income from a developed country. However, there are some open questions with regard to virological methods. 1.) The authors should please add original data from their seroepidemiological study, like IgM indices, IgG levels and IgG avidity assays. This could help to understand the different subcohorts of the seropositive pool of 965 mothers. 2.) Why in the seroconversion data in T3 of primary infections no CMV IgG avidity data are given? It would also be helpful to see the original data of CMV IgG levels, IgM indices, and CMV IgG avidity. 3.) These lacking data should-if available- also be evaluated statistically to characterise CMV primary infections versus non-primary infections or latent CMV infections. Do all primary infected women in T3 really express clear low IgG avidity? 4.) Fig 2: how the drop in CMV seroconversion from 2005 to 2006 can be explained? Is it a potential bias, since in 2005 only 185 pregnant women were included? ********** 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: Yes: Klaus Hamprecht [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 |
Frequency, timing and risk factors for primary maternal cytomegalovirus infection during pregnancy in Quebec. PONE-D-20-40657R1 Dear Dr. Boucoiran, 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, Juliet V Spencer, Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: |
Formally Accepted |
PONE-D-20-40657R1 Frequency, timing and risk factors for primary maternal cytomegalovirus infection during pregnancy in Quebec. Dear Dr. Boucoiran: 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. Juliet V Spencer Academic Editor PLOS ONE |
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