Peer Review History
Original SubmissionAugust 30, 2021 |
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PONE-D-21-28109The aetiological relationship between depressive symptoms and health-related quality of life: A population-based twin study in Sri LankaPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Triantafyllou, 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. I was fortunate to receive 2 excellent reviews of your manuscript. Please address all the comments raised when revising your paper. In addition, I would be grateful if you could address the following points from my own reading: Abstract Results: The quoted figures for depression add up to 100%, for HRQL, a range is given for E and a combined range for A and C. It is not clear in abstract what the ranges are: confidence intervals? Sub-scales? I recommend separating out the A and C estimates. I am not sure how they can add up to 100% with the ranges given either. For example if the E estimate is at the upper range, should there be a lower range value for A and C to keep the total to 100%? Rph-A etc abbreviations needs explanation for this journal as you give in the method. That won’t help readers at the abstract stage, however. I recommend leaving these figures out of the abstract and just explaining conceptually what these results mean here. Introduction Final paragraph. Check numbering. Method Genetic Model fitting: Please add a reference supporting the validity of the twin modelling assumptions mentioned. Discussion Para 1 Please comment on why the results of this study may differ from other analyses of the same dataset. Please submit your revised manuscript by Feb 06 2022 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. In your Data Availability statement, you have not specified where the minimal data set underlying the results described in your manuscript can be found. PLOS defines a study's minimal data set as the underlying data used to reach the conclusions drawn in the manuscript and any additional data required to replicate the reported study findings in their entirety. All PLOS journals require that the minimal data set be made fully available. For more information about our data policy, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability. Upon re-submitting your revised manuscript, please upload your study’s minimal underlying data set as either Supporting Information files or to a stable, public repository and include the relevant URLs, DOIs, or accession numbers within your revised cover letter. 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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. 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: 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 study presents data on 3948 participants including 478 male and 668 female MZ paired twins, 302 male and 410 DZ paired same-sex twins, and 343 male and 343 female opposite sex paired twins, plus single twins and singletons. In 2012-2015 follow-up, depressive symptoms were measured by BDI-II and 8 domains of health-related quality of life (HRQL) was measured by Ware's SF-36. Main findings are that depressive symptoms are negatively correlated with all the HRQF measures as expected in studies in West. Assuming an ACE model, estimates of heritability were significant only for depressive symptoms (33% A and 67% E) and emotional well-being (23% A and 87% E). C was prominent in HRQL for women, but not in men. E was strong for all traits (67% to 93%). For the heritable trait of depressive symptoms, there were weak but significant phenotypic correlations with emotional role functioning, which is not significantly heritable in either sex, (-.11 men and -.18 women) and emotional well-being (-.23), consistent with overlap in the measures and/or weak genetic overlap. The writing and analytic work is excellent. The modeling of possible sex differences considered alternative models of no sex difference or a difference by a scalar multiplier. This was well done. Another strength is that the evidence for shared environmental effects in women is reasonably interpretable in terms of the psychosocial and socioeconomic conditions of women in Sri Lanka. This paper provides a good example of the utility of research in different cultures. A limitation that should be discussed is the assumption of the ACE model itself when studying complex phenotypes like health-related quality of life. Recent studies of the genetics of personality and its strong relationship to health and well-being indicate that there are extensive gene-gene and gene-environmental effects in health-related well-being (Zwir I, et al, Molecular Psychiatry 2020-2021). This calls linear ACE models into question because the relevant genes and/or environments are not really functioning independently. Despite this general concern, the pattern of twin correlations observed are in fact more consistent with an ACE model rather than an epistatic or g-e model (e.g., none have MZ >> DZ correlations), so use of an ACE model is apparently adequate for the data examined. Nevertheless, the description of E in the discussion as involving lifestyle, life events, or chronic illness needs to be more nuanced because personality traits with complex inheritance patterns are strong, but partial, determinants of all these variables (Cloninger et al, Translational Psychiatry 9:290; https://rdcu.be/bZbaJ). This has important implications also for the future directions because it would be inadequate to consider the direction of effects between depressive symptoms and HRQL without recognizing that they both develop in the more-or-less self-regulated lives of people in a complex psychosocial, sociocultural, and ecological context. For example, to understand how to improve the lives of women in Sri Lanka effectively will require a comprehensive understanding of how their social and economic position might be enhanced so that they can function with more psychological well-being. Considering BDI and SF-36 scores in a vacuum is unlikely to be very revealing, and the Colombo study may well have the potential to shed light on this. Reviewer #2: I really enjoyed the paper. The methodology used is of an excellent level. I have very few suggestions. In general, I recommend a simpler exposition that allows readers, without high skills in Behavioral Genetics, to understand the rationale of the analyses. I have nothing to underline with regard to the methodology and the analyzes which, as I said, are absolutely adequate for the objectives and purposes of the work. Introduction I suggest to better explain the importance and the rationale to investigate the common etiological factors under the covariation between depressive symptoms and poor HRQL. Methods A better explanation of the models should be provided. For example, authors reported ‘the female variance is multiplied by a constant (scalar)’ What does it mean? Results The reader who is not expert in BG could have problems in interpreting the model-fitting results. What does it mean that the best model is the scalar one? what repercussions does it have on the knowledge of the covariance between the two phenotypes? Discussion Discussion could be benefit from a clinical interpretation of the data. ********** 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 [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. 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Revision 1 |
The aetiological relationship between depressive symptoms and health-related quality of life: A population-based twin study in Sri Lanka PONE-D-21-28109R1 Dear Dr. Triantafyllou, 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. Very many thanks for your careful response to the reviewers' comments. 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, Richard Rowe Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: |
Formally Accepted |
PONE-D-21-28109R1 The aetiological relationship between depressive symptoms and health-related quality of life: A population-based twin study in Sri Lanka Dear Dr. Triantafyllou: 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 Professor Richard Rowe Academic Editor PLOS ONE |
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