PONE-D-21-07166

Comparing the diagnostic accuracy for detection of light Schistosoma haematobium infection in an elimination setting in Wolaita Zone, South Western Ethiopia.

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Mohammed,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that as submitted it does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria in its present form. The subject topic is of significance and we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses all the points raised during the review process. Please note, your revised manuscript will undergo further review before reaching a final decision.

Please submit your revised manuscript within 60 days from the date of this letter. 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 are 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 carefully revised and edited manuscript for further consideration.

Kind regards,

Nirbhay Kumar, Ph. D.

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

2. PLOS requires an ORCID iD for the corresponding author in Editorial Manager on papers submitted after December 6th, 2016. Please ensure that you have an ORCID iD and that it is validated in Editorial Manager. To do this, go to ‘Update my Information’ (in the upper left-hand corner of the main menu), and click on the Fetch/Validate link next to the ORCID field. This will take you to the ORCID site and allow you to create a new iD or authenticate a pre-existing iD in Editorial Manager. Please see the following video for instructions on linking an ORCID iD to your Editorial Manager account: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xcclfuvtxQ

3. Please include your tables as part of your main manuscript and remove the individual files. Please note that supplementary tables (should remain/ be uploaded) as separate "supporting information" files.

4. We suggest you thoroughly copyedit your manuscript for language usage, spelling, and grammar. If you do not know anyone who can help you do this, you may wish to consider employing a professional scientific editing service.  

Whilst you may use any professional scientific editing service of your choice, PLOS has partnered with both American Journal Experts (AJE) and Editage to provide discounted services to PLOS authors. Both organizations have experience helping authors meet PLOS guidelines and can provide language editing, translation, manuscript formatting, and figure formatting to ensure your manuscript meets our submission guidelines. To take advantage of our partnership with AJE, visit the AJE website (http://learn.aje.com/plos/) for a 15% discount off AJE services. To take advantage of our partnership with Editage, visit the Editage website (www.editage.com) and enter referral code PLOSEDIT for a 15% discount off Editage services.  If the PLOS editorial team finds any language issues in text that either AJE or Editage has edited, the service provider will re-edit the text for free.

Upon resubmission, please provide the following:

• The name of the colleague or the details of the professional service that edited your manuscript
• A copy of your manuscript showing your changes by either highlighting them or using track changes (uploaded as a *supporting information* file)
• A clean copy of the edited manuscript (uploaded as the new *manuscript* file)

5. Please provide additional details regarding participant consent. In the ethics statement in the Methods and online submission information, please ensure that you have specified how verbal consent was documented and witnessed.

6. 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. For a list of acceptable repositories, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-recommended-repositories. Any potentially identifying patient information must be fully anonymized.

Important: If there are ethical or legal restrictions to sharing your data publicly, please explain these restrictions in detail. Please see our guidelines for more information on what we consider unacceptable restrictions to publicly sharing data: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-unacceptable-data-access-restrictions. Note that it is not acceptable for the authors to be the sole named individuals responsible for ensuring data access.

We will update your Data Availability statement to reflect the information you provide in your cover letter.

7. Please amend your list of authors on the manuscript to ensure that each author is linked to an affiliation. Authors’ affiliations should reflect the institution where the work was done (if authors moved subsequently, you can also list the new affiliation stating “current affiliation:….” as necessary).

8. We note you have included a table to which you do not refer in the text of your manuscript. Please ensure that you refer to Table 1 in your text; if accepted, production will need this reference to link the reader to the Table.

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

[The authors would like to thank the study participants and data collectors, supervisors, funders, zone and weredahealth offices and local guides.]

We note that you have provided funding information that is not currently declared in your Funding Statement. However, 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:

 [The authors received no specific funding for this work.]

Please include your amended statements within your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf.

[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: No

**********

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: This study is a relevant comparison of the diagnostic accuracy of detecting light Schistosoma haematobium infections which would go a long way towards addressing shortcomings in the monitoring and evaluation of intervention programs. The study compares the urinalysis dipstick method and the urine filtration method (reference gold-standard) statistically using a significantly large study population over a period of two years. The study was well designed to compare the two methods which revealed significantly different outcomes in terms of sensitivity and specificity. The study addresses a very relevant question of the accuracy of dipstick method and the possibility of its use as a proxy or adjunct diagnostic tool for the more involving and less sensitive gold-standard filtration method. (Continue to attachment)

Reviewer #2: This manuscript is a study on two diagnostic techniques for the detection of low prevalence of Schistosoma haematobium infection. The reviewer's comments have provided and they attached here with this submission

**********

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. 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.

Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: Peer Review PONE-D-21-07166.docx

Attachment

Submitted filename: Reviewer comment to Author 04222021.docx

PONE-D-21-07166R1Comparing the diagnostic accuracy for detection of light Schistosoma haematobium infection in an elimination setting in Wolaita Zone, South Western Ethiopia.

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Hussein Mohammed,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. Your manuscript has been reviewed by number required reviewers.  The reviewers have brought up some minor concerns  in material and methods, results and conclusion in the text manuscript. Please carefully consider that reviewer(s) comment(s) and address them point-by-point before revision submission.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Wannaporn Ittiprasert, Ph.D

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.

[Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.]

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

Reviewer #2: 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: Partly

Reviewer #2: Partly

**********

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

Reviewer #1: I Don't Know

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

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

**********

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

**********

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: The authors partly addressed my concerns from thr initial review on precisely how they carried out the gold standard urine filtration method. They did not collect 2 or 3 consecutive daily urine samples. Instead, they carried out urine filtration with replicates of the same one-day urine sample. Due to diurnal variation in egg shedding, this does not present a fair assessment of the gold standard urine filtration method with the dipstick microhematuria test. The author's still did not show a table of the POA-CCA test mentioned.

Reviewer #2: Review of manuscript: Comparing the diagnostic accuracy for detection of light Schistosoma haematobium infection in an elimination setting in Wolaita Zone, South Western Ethiopia

Reviewer’s Comments to Author

Comments to the Author

The manuscript proposed by Mohammed et al. is titled: Comparing the diagnostic accuracy for detection of light Schistosoma haematobium infection in an elimination setting in Wolaita Zone, South Western Ethiopia

The study described in this manuscript was conducted in the Wolaita Zone, South Western Ethiopia and it provides information on the comparative analyses of two schistosomiasis diagnostic techniques – Urinalysis dipstick and urine filtration. The authors attempted to shed a new light on the use of these diagnostic techniques in order to fill gaps in our knowledge of schistosomiasis control. The study was conducted between 2018 and 2020 and a total of 16,780 children and adults participated in the study. A total of 12,102 samples were examined in the baseline study using dipstick and urine filtration; among them, 285 (2.4%) samples were positive for microhematuria and 21 (0.2%) positive for S. haematobium eggs by urine filtration. 501 urine samples were examined in 2019 and 10 (2.0%) were positive for microhematuria, and all of them were negative for S. haematobium infection. A total of 3875 individuals were examined in 2020 and 162 (4.2%) were positive for microhematuria and 2 (0.05%) were positive for S. haematobium eggs. The prevalence of microhematuria infection based on reagent dipstick was comparable between males (50.9%) and females (49.1%), and across the different age groups Pre-SAC (17.1%), SAC (25.0%), 15 to 20 (20.4%), 21 to 35 (20.2%) and 36+(17.3%) years. The prevalence of microhematuria was highest in SAC (4-15 years age) compared to other age groups. The sensitivity and specificity of reagent strip was 100% (95% CI:85.18%–100.00%) and 97.4% (95% CI: 97.10%-97.60%), respectively. The PPV was low 5.03% and NPV was high 100%.

Most of the concerns addressed in my initial review have been addressed.

Abstract

The calculations are still not correct. 285/16,780 is not equal to 2.4% (285/12,102 = 2.4%). Also, 172/16,654 is not equal to 6.2%. The calculations need to be checked again.

Materials and Methods

Sample size calculations

“The sample size was estimated using at least 70% probability of woredas with true prevalence of schistosomiasis of 15% being classified as 10% or over, under the assumption that the lower

focality of STH was led to sufficient sample sizes for schistosomiasis between 26% and 75% of

kebeles were surveyed within each woreda [21], with a higher proportion of kebeles being

surveyed in small woreda.”

The sentence above has still not been revised for better comprehension.

Results

There is a great disparity between the samples analyzed during the baseline study, in year 1 and year 2 respectively? Why is this so? Why are there only 501 samples analyzed in year 1?

The information in table 1 should be represented graphically

Discussion

The discussion section still needs a careful revision to correct typographical errors. The sentence “Using kappa value evaluation between the two tests was revealed slight agreement” should be corrected.

Conclusion

It is still difficult to understand the conclusion from the study based on the wording of the sentences. The authors need to compose the information in a way that is clear and understandable.

The manuscript as revised is an improvement on the previous version but it still requires further revision.

**********

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: Yes: Davison Sangweme

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. 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.

Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: Second Reviewer comment to Author 02032022.docx

Comparing the accuracy of two diagnostic methods for detection of light Schistosoma haematobium infection in an elimination setting in Wolaita Zone, South Western Ethiopia

PONE-D-21-07166R2

Dear Dr. Hussein Mohammed,

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,

Wannaporn Ittiprasert, Ph.D

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 #2: 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 #2: Yes

**********

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

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

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 #2: 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 #2: 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 #2: The authors have addressed the concerns in my previous review. Most of the typographical errors have been corrected and the statistical analyses have been improved upon. The manuscript is a major improvement on the previous versions

**********

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 #2: Yes: Mobolaji Okulate