Maternal obesity and metabolic disorders associate with congenital heart defects in the offspring: A systematic review

Gitte Hedermann; Paula L. Hedley; Ida N. Thagaard; Lone Krebs; Charlotte Kvist Ekelund; Thorkild I. A. Sørensen; Michael Christiansen

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0252343

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionFebruary 27, 2021
25 Mar 2021 Decision Letter - Linglin Xie, Editor PONE-D-21-00142 Maternal obesity and metabolic disorders associate with congenital heart defects in the offspring: a systematic review PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Hedermann, 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. Please submit your revised manuscript by 05/22/2021. 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. 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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, Linglin Xie 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 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf [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: Partly Reviewer #2: Yes ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: I Don't Know 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: Yes 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: The article conducted a systematic review to evaluate the relationship between maternal metabolic syndrome and offspring CHD. By reviewing previous studies, the paper pointed out that some metabolic disorders could increase the risk of CHD marginally, while PGMD and early PE are strongly associated with CHD. However, some major questions are also noticed: The article screening was conducted based on PubMed and Embase. While there could be more established information available in addition to the electronic databases such as trial registries, is there any reason to exclude those? Why did the paper only select papers that involved cohort or case control studies that are published in English? This will reduce the comprehensiveness of the article. As the article mentioned, the occurrence of diabetes, obesity and hypertension could be concurrent. Will there be any interaction in between when summarizing maternal metabolic disorders and different types of CHD in the offspring? Reviewer #2: The paper is well written. the research question is well crafted and clearly stated. The authors used an appropriate tool (PRISMA) for the review. Clear definition of terms and outcome variable was done. However, the authors will need to refence many of the statements made in the background(e,g, lines 50,55,56, 60,61,62,65,66 etc) ****** 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:** Christopher Yilgwan [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. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0252343.r001
Revision 1
26 Apr 2021 Author Response Review Comments to the Author Reviewer #1: The article conducted a systematic review to evaluate the relationship between maternal metabolic syndrome and offspring CHD. By reviewing previous studies, the paper pointed out that some metabolic disorders could increase the risk of CHD marginally, while PGMD and early PE are strongly associated with CHD. However, some major questions are also noticed: The article screening was conducted based on PubMed and Embase. While there could be more established information available in addition to the electronic databases such as trial registries, is there any reason to exclude those? Answer: We agree that further information may be available from trial registers. We have searched the following registers with the indicated outcomes: WHO ICTRP (https://www.who.int/clinical-trials-registry-platform): 139 records for 121 trials, none relevant for this topic. BMC ISRCTN (https://www.isrctn.com/): 23 results, none relevant for this topic. The EU Clinical Trails Register (https://www.clinicaltrialsregister.eu/ctr-search/search): 32 results, none relevant for this topic. ClinicalTrials.gov: 431 results, five studies of possible relevance (ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT02914392; NCT01669057; NCT00757510; NCT00005258; NCT00005153). No one included results at ClinicalTrials.gov, none had published articles of relevance when searching PubMed using the primary investigator’s name, and therefore none of the five studies were possible to include in the review. We have added the following in the Methods section: “A search in a number of clinical trial registers April 12, 2021 (search term: “congenital heart defects”) identified five trials that might be relevant for this topic. However, no results were available from the trial registers or PubMed, and therefore not possible to include in the review.” (Materials and methods; Search strategy; p. 5, lines 100-103) Why did the paper only select papers that involved cohort or case control studies that are published in English? This will reduce the comprehensiveness of the article. Answer: We agree that limiting to English does carry the risk of overlooking data published in other languages. However, we are simply not able to evaluate studies in other languages, e.g., Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, etc. Among the studies reviewed, there were studies from various ethnicities, and we did not find noteworthy differences between these groups. Therefore, we have, as is frequently done, limited our search to English, as also mentioned as a limitation in the Discussion. As the article mentioned, the occurrence of diabetes, obesity and hypertension could be concurrent. Will there be any interaction in between when summarizing maternal metabolic disorders and different types of CHD in the offspring? Answer: We agree that this is a very important question and we have stressed the need of this in the conclusion of the paper. Our review shows that there is a sad shortage of studies establishing the potential effect of concurrent metabolic disorders. The small number of studies (n = 1) preclude modeling of any interactions Reviewer #2: The paper is well written. the research question is well crafted and clearly stated. The authors used an appropriate tool (PRISMA) for the review. Clear definition of terms and outcome variable was done. However, the authors will need to refence many of the statements made in the background (e,g, lines 50,55,56, 60,61,62,65,66 etc) Answer: We acknowledge the missing references and have now added more of these to the Introduction section (p. 3-4, lines 50, 55, 56, 61, 62, 66, and 80). Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0252343.r002
14 May 2021 Decision Letter - Linglin Xie, Editor Maternal obesity and metabolic disorders associate with congenital heart defects in the offspring: a systematic review PONE-D-21-00142R1 Dear Dr. Hedermann, 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, Linglin Xie 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 ******** 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: N/A ****** 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: (No Response) ****** 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 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0252343.r003
Formally Accepted
19 May 2021 Acceptance Letter - Linglin Xie, Editor PONE-D-21-00142R1 Maternal obesity and metabolic disorders associate with congenital heart defects in the offspring: a systematic review Dear Dr. Hedermann: 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. Linglin Xie Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0252343.r004

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