Peer Review History

Original SubmissionMarch 3, 2021

Attachments
Attachment
Submitted filename: PO-journal-Response to Reviewer-21-03-02.docx
Decision Letter - Yoshihiro Fukumoto, Editor

PONE-D-21-04188

A 50 Hz magnetic field affects hemodynamics, ECG and vascular endothelial function in healthy adults: A pilot randomized controlled trial

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. OKANO,

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.

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Yoshihiro Fukumoto

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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3. We note that you attach your application form for Human Research Ethics Committee approval as your "Protocol" instead of the original written comprehensive protocol that would have been submitted along with the application for ethics review.  The protocol should be the complete and detailed plan for the conduct and analysis of the trial. Please send this in the original language. If this is in a language other than English, please also provide a translation. Please detail any deviations from this study protocol in the Methods section of your manuscript. Your study protocol will be made available to the editors and reviewers, and will be published as supporting information with your manuscript if accepted for publication. (If you do not agree to this, we will not be able to publish your manuscript). If you have formally published a study protocol for your trial in a journal then you should cite this in your manuscript, but you still need to send us the original document.

4. Thank you for stating in your Funding Statement:

This study represents independent research part funded by the Advanced Institute of Innovative Technology, Saitama University. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. There was no additional external funding received for this study.

Please provide an amended statement that declares *all* the funding or sources of support (whether external or internal to your organization) received during this study, as detailed online in our guide for authors at http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submit-now.  Please also include the statement “There was no additional external funding received for this study.” in your updated Funding Statement.

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[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

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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?

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

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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

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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: PONE-D-21-04188: statistical review

SUMMARY. This study is a cross-over trial of the effects a magnetic field on hemodynamics, electrocardiogram, and vascular endothelial function in healthy young men. The core statistical analysis correctly relies on repeated-measures ANOVA. I however list below three specific issues that should be addressed.

SPECIFIC ISSUES

1. The Shapiro-Wilk test has been used for testing outcomes normality. The outputs of the tests are however not displayed. Please add these outputs as supplementary material: given the small sample size, checks of normality are crucial!

2. All the results are displayed in the form of figures, which is nice. However, the authors should also provide traditional tables with effects estimates, p-values and variance components. These tables would clarify the details of the statistical analysis and facilitate the replicability of the results.

2. Although the authors declare that the data are available without restrictions, the raw data are not attached to this submission. The data should be included as supplementary material or made available in a public repository.

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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.

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Reviewer #1: 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

Reply to Editor:

1. PLOS ONE’s style requirements.

We checked the PLOS ONE’s style requirements.

2. Registration.

1) your reasons for your delay in registering this study (after enrolment of participants started).

Please see the methods:

The late registration was due to an error of omission. Such late registration does not affect study results and participants. We confirmed that all ongoing and related trials for this intervention are registered. We hereby state that all future trials will be registered prospectively.

2) confirmation that all related trials are registered by stating: “The authors confirm that all ongoing and related trials for this drug/intervention are registered”.

We confirmed that all trials for this intervention are registered.

3. Protocol.

The protocol should be the complete and detailed plan for the conduct and analysis of the trial.

We addressed “Experimental protocol” attached “S1 file” in supporting information.

Please send this in the original language.

We addressed “Experimental protocol in Japanese” attached “S2 file” in supporting information.

4 Funding Statement.

We declared the statement “There was no additional external funding received for this study.” in our updated Funding Statement.

5. Please include captions for ALL your Supporting Information files at the end of your manuscript, and update any in-text citations to match accordingly.

We attached “S1-S5 files” as shown in supporting information at the end of our manuscript and updated the citations:

Supporting Information

S1 File. Trial protocol and informed consent form.

(DOCX)

S2 File. Trial protocol and informed consent form in Japanese.

(DOCX)

S3 File. CONSORT checklist.

(DOCX)

S4 File. Additional methods, results and figures.

(DOCX)

S5 File. Data set.

(XLSX)

Reply to Reviewer:

1. Analysis of the Shapiro-Wilk test.

We showed all of the outputs of the Shapiro-Wilk tests as “The Shapiro-Wilk test results for normality assumptions” in “Table A in S4 File”:

Supporting Information

S4 File. Additional methods, results and figures.

(DOCX)

Table A. The Shapiro-Wilk test results for normality assumptions.

1. Subject baseline characteristics in the protocol A and B.

2. Comparison of change rate (%) of ulnar arterial blood flow velocity (BFV), blood pressure (BP), heart rate (HR), hemoglobin oxygenation index (HOI), RRI, HF, LF/HF and FMD between 50 Hz MF and sham exposures.

2. Presentation of the tables indicating p-values and variance components.

We showed all of the tables with p-values in the results:

Table 3. Comparison of change rate (%) of ulnar arterial blood flow velocity between 50 Hz MF and sham exposures.

Table 4. Comparison of blood pressure (BP) and heart rate (HR) between 50 Hz MF and sham exposures in the forearm.

Table 5. Comparison of change rate (%) of hemoglobin oxygenation index between 50 Hz MF and sham exposures in the forearm.

Table 6. Comparison of change rate (%) of ECG parameters between 50 Hz MF and sham exposures in the neck.

Table 7. Comparison of FMD (%) between 50 Hz MF and sham exposures in the upper arm.

3. Presentation of the raw data.

We attached all of the raw data as shown in “S5 File”:

Supporting Information

S5 File. Data set.

(XLSX)

Decision Letter - Yoshihiro Fukumoto, Editor

A 50 Hz magnetic field affects hemodynamics, ECG and vascular endothelial function in healthy adults: A pilot randomized controlled trial

PONE-D-21-04188R1

Dear Dr. OKANO,

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,

Yoshihiro Fukumoto

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: (No Response)

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

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

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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: (No Response)

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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: (No Response)

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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)

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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

Formally Accepted
Acceptance Letter - Yoshihiro Fukumoto, Editor

PONE-D-21-04188R1

A 50 Hz magnetic field affects hemodynamics, ECG and vascular endothelial function in healthy adults: A pilot randomized controlled trial

Dear Dr. Okano:

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. Yoshihiro Fukumoto

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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