PONE-D-21-09898

Association among events that occurred in the gestation period and obesity in children with the use of dermatoglyphic traits

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Alberti,

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Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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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: Partly

Reviewer #3: No

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: N/A

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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: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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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: No

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: 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: The paper presents interesting an unique study worth publication. However, there are some issues that need correction.

1. English language should be checked and corrected by proffesional English editor.

2. The introduction is too short- it should more deeply justify the need of the study and give more scientific background.

3. Please underline the novelty of the study in the introduction.

4. Justify the childrens' age. Why you have included children in the age of 10-11??

5. The total population calculated for the study was 316; however you managed to include only 73. This is great weak point of the study and should be pointed broadly in limitation. In title please point that this is a pilot study or preliminary study- the complete study should include the total of 316 children.

6. Provide the manufacturer of digitale scale. Was the body measured fasting?

7. In methods please clearly provide information on what kinds of "events that occurred in the gestation period" were analyzed in the study.

8. The RESULT section should start from the sentence "The results obtained demonstrate that there was a significant correlation between the number of ridges on the child’s fingers, ... " at line 216.

9. In table headings you use AGM abbrev., but in the table there is IGM- correct it.

10. In results (text and tables) clearly state whose BMI do you mean- child or maternal.

11. "Different genetic variants have been identified as monogenic forms of human obesity, having success over common polygenic forms." This sentence is not clear. Do you mean that monogenic forms of obesity predominate over polygenic? It is not true- correct it.

12. Your discussion is a simple enumaretion of the results of similar studies. Please provide some molecular/genetic mechanisms linking obesity and fingerprints, some clinical implications and directions of future studies in the issue.

13. In the study aim and title you pointed, that you want to analyze the association between events occurring in the gestational period and the occurrence of obesity in children from dermatoglyphic traits. However, in the study you did not present any results relating to "events occurring in the gestational period". Namely, you did not investigate events occurring in the gestational period. The only "event" analyzed was maternal age at gestation onset. Please correct study title and aim deleting "events occurring in the gestational period". Unfortunately, the lack of the analysis of "events occurring in the gestational period" significantly decreases the scientific value of the paper.

14. After limitations please add some study strong points.

15. "The study shows the application of research in dermatoglyphics as an epigenetic predictive obesity trait, and the results show predictive obesity traits in children. In addition, the results were associated with gestational data." Such sentence should be placed in the discussion section. Moreover, you did not discussed any "epigenetic" link between obesity and fingerprint. Thus, the use of word "epigenetic" in the paper is unjustifiable.

I recommand to accept the paper after major revision.

Reviewer #2: The authors have presented useful data

I have the following comments

1) The authors have used the term predictive traits; however, they have just used correlations. Even regressions have not been used for analysis

2) The results section merges into methods. It is difficult to understand the whole results section

3) Do we have information on the mothers? Nothing much has been included in the manuscript

Reviewer #3: Here the authors analyze the association between events during gestation and the occurrence of obesity in children from dermatoglyphic traits. The authors report a predictive traits of obesity when comparing BMI and fingerprint groups in the figure patterns for males.

1) This is a preliminary correlation study and does not have any novel mechanistic insight.

2) The sample size (73) is too small to have any predictive value.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: No

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Association among events that occurred in the gestation period and obesity in children with the use of dermatoglyphic traits

PONE-D-21-09898R1

Dear Dr. Alberti,

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.

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Kind regards,

Ramune Jacobsen

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Reviewers' comments:

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

Reviewer #2: 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: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: I Don't Know

Reviewer #2: Yes

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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: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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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: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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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: All comments have been addressed.

All changes have been implemented. I recommend accepting the manuscript.

Reviewer #2: The authors have addressed my queries. They have justified their reasons for using the methods. It may be appropriate if these add these details in the manuscript as well.

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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

Reviewer #2: No