Peer Review History

Original SubmissionJune 8, 2021
Decision Letter - Kunaal Dhingra, Editor

PONE-D-21-18861

Interleukin-17 is disease promoting in early stages and protective in late stages of experimental periodontitis

PLOS ONE

Dear Author,

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 Sep 10 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:

  • A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
  • A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
  • An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. 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. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Dr. Kunaal Dhingra, MDS, MFDS RCPS (Glasg), MFDS RCS (Eng), MDTFEd

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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2. Please include the method of euthanasia in the manuscript Methods.

3. As part of your revision, please complete and submit a copy of the Full ARRIVE 2.0 Guidelines checklist, a document that aims to improve experimental reporting and reproducibility of animal studies for purposes of post-publication data analysis and reproducibility: https://arriveguidelines.org/sites/arrive/files/Author%20Checklist%20-%20Full.pdf (PDF). Please include your completed checklist as a Supporting Information file. Note that if your paper is accepted for publication, this checklist will be published as part of your article.

4. Thank you for stating the following in the Acknowledgments Section of your manuscript: 

This work was supported by the German–Israeli Foundation for Scientific Research and Development Grant 1432 (to A.-H.H. and I.P.), by a grant from the Niedersächsisch-Israelische Forschungsförderung (to A.-H.H. and I.P.), and by the DG PARO CP GABA (to A.W., I.P., and M.S.) A. Wilharm and C. Binz were supported by the Hannover Biomedical Research School.

We note that you have provided additional information within the Acknowledgements Section that is not currently declared in your Funding Statement. Please note that funding information should not appear in the Acknowledgments section or other areas of your manuscript. We will only publish funding information present in the Funding Statement section of the online submission form. 

Please remove any funding-related text from the manuscript and let us know how you would like to update your Funding Statement. Currently, your Funding Statement reads as follows: 

This work was supported by the German–Israeli Foundation for Scientific Research and Development Grant 1432 (to A.-H.H. and I.P., http://www.gif.org.il/pages/default.aspx), by a grant from the Niedersächsisch-Israelische Forschungsförderung (to A.-H.H. and I.P.), and by the DG PARO CP GABA (to A.W., I.P., and M.S.) A. Wilharm and C. Binz were supported by the Hannover Biomedical Research School. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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Additional Editor Comments:

The manuscript is well written. Kindly address following concerns by reviewers:

Introduction length should be a little shorter while Discussion longer with details given in Introduction.

The last sentence of the "Discussion" element (Conclusion): "in the end IL-17 has a protective function for the organism, but a damaging for the bone" seems too general.

Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. 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.

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

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: 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: Yes

Reviewer #2: 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: Yes

Reviewer #2: 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: As the role of IL-17 within the dental tissues is still insufficiently clarified, this study brings very interesting findings in order to provide explanation for dual effects of IL-17. This research is well designed, conducted and presented. Minor suggestion is the Introduction length (should be a little shorter), while Discussion longer with details given in Introduction.

Reviewer #2: The manuscript entitled "Interleukin-17 is disease promoting in early stages and protective in late stages of experimental periodontitis" is nicely prepared. Though, the last sentence of the "Discussion" element (Conclusion): "in the end IL-17 has a protective function for the organism, but a damaging for the bone" seems too general.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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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

Dear Dr. Dhingra, dear reviewers,

Thank you for your careful consideration of our manuscript PONE-D-21-18861. We have the pleasure to submit a revised manuscript and to answer the questions raised by you and the reviewers.

Reply to editorial comments:

You asked to revise the manuscript regarding the PLOS one´s style requirements and file naming. We reassessed the journal-requirements and adjusted the manuscript accordingly. Since you requested to include the method of euthanasia in the methods part, we mentioned it in line 501 to 502 and as you wished, we completed the ARRIVE 2.0 Guidelines checklist. To further adhere the journal requirements, we removed the funding statement entirely from the manuscript itself. We do not want to make any changes regarding the funding statement given in the online submission form. Apart from this, we employed the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) to revise the figures as you proposed.

Reply to Reviewer #1: We revised the manuscript regarding the length of the introduction and the discussion, as you suggested. We hope that the structure of the revised manuscript now meets your expectations.

Reply to Reviewer #2: We fully agree with the reviewer that this last sentence of the discussion: “in the end IL-17 has a protective function for the organism, but a damaging for the bone” is very general. According to the reviewer’s suggestion, we thus removed it from the manuscript.

Kind regards

Christoph Binz

(on behalf of all authors of PONE-D-21-18861)

Attachments
Attachment
Submitted filename: Response to reviewers.pdf
Decision Letter - Kunaal Dhingra, Editor

PONE-D-21-18861R1Interleukin-17 is disease promoting in early stages and protective in late stages of experimental periodontitisPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Binz,

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 Mar 10 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:

  • A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
  • A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
  • An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.
If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Kunaal Dhingra, MDS, MFDS RCPS (Glasg), MFDS RCS (Eng), MDTFEd

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal Requirements:

Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. 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.

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer #3: I found the manuscript “Interleukin-17 is disease promoting in early stages and protective in late stages of experimental periodontitis” interesting. It is well written and the methodology is rigorous.

I think that the abstract section is not quite informative. In particular lines 22-30 are a sort of “introduction section”, lines 31-33 represent “methods section”, whereas a few lines are dedicated to the results. I suggest to reduce the introductory part and pay more attention for the results obtained. Furthermore, I suggest to better specify in lines 34-36 what is intended for “bone-damaging” and “bone-protective” effects.

The study focuses on the analysis of IL-17. I believe it would be appropriate to implement the introduction and discussion sections by better investigating the role of this cytokine in the human body and in other oral disorders, especially those that are immune-mediated and / or potentially malignant.

Except for these small improvements, the topic of the study is very interesting and the effort of the authors is to be appreciated.

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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 2

Dear Dr. Dhingra, dear reviewers,

Thank you for your careful consideration of our manuscript PONE-D-21-18861R1 and the offer to submit a revised manuscript and to answer the questions raised by the reviewers.

Reply to Reviewer #3: Thank you for making us aware of the mis-relation between the description of results versus other contents in the abstract. We reorganized large parts of the abstract and hope that it is now suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Since you suggested a more intense and general description/discussion of IL-17 and its functions, we now added such sections in the introduction and discussion describing general effects of IL-17 as well as the role of IL-17 in several other diseases and models and giving a short comparison between the situation in mice and humans.

All changes in the revised manuscript are highlighted in yellow to facilitate peer review.

Kind regards

Christoph Binz

(on behalf of all authors of PONE-D-21-18861R1)

Attachments
Attachment
Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.pdf
Decision Letter - Kunaal Dhingra, Editor

Interleukin-17 is disease promoting in early stages and protective in late stages of experimental periodontitis

PONE-D-21-18861R2

Dear Dr. Binz,

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.

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Kind regards,

Kunaal Dhingra, MDS, MFDS RCPS (Glasg), MFDS RCS (Eng), MDTFEd

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

I thank the authors for making the required changes. The manuscript can be accepted for publication.

Formally Accepted
Acceptance Letter - Kunaal Dhingra, Editor

PONE-D-21-18861R2

Interleukin-17 is disease promoting in early stages and protective in late stages of experimental periodontitis

Dear Dr. Binz:

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.

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Kind regards,

PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff

on behalf of

Dr. Kunaal Dhingra

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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