PONE-D-20-34991

A database study of clinical and economic burden of IMD in France

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Marié

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PLOS ONE

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“This project was funded by Pfizer France. LH, SF, AE and MTTH are employees of Pfizer. They had a role in study design, decision to publish and preparation of the manuscript.

SB, LM and MG were paied by Pfizer France as a consultancy company for study design, data collection in analysis, and development of the manuscript.”

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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: Yes

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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: 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

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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: Thanks so much for inviting me to review this manuscript. It is well written and very interesting paper. Vaccination has greatly reduced the burden of infectious diseases. It is a double edged sword. Vaccine-preventable diseases have gone down, followed by a rise in vaccine hesitancy. It is great to read a paper investigating the burden of IMD, a life threatening disease. I only have a few minor comments.

Financial disclosure (page 1): In the Acknowledgement section, the authors stated the work was supported by a public grant. This grant was not mentioned here and it was only said that the project was funded by Pfizer.

Introduction

Line 31: The authors stated that case fatality rate (CRF) ranged from 10% to 40%. Only in elderly people, the CFR could reach 40%. On average, the CFR ranged from 4-20%.

Statistical Analysis

Line 102: can the author please add more information and explain why GLM with gamma distribution and a log link function was used? Did the authors conduct any model fitting tests?

Results

Lines 117/120/126: Error messages. Can the authors remove or revise the references?

Table 2: Amputation/skin necrosis. I would expect amputation and skin necrosis could all be diagnosed during the index hospitalisation. But, 16 patients with amputation and skin necrosis were identified after the index hospitalisation. I suspect a few skin grafting procedures might be performed after the index hospitalisation. If that was true, can the authors please add skin grafting?

Line 155: Would it better to say numbers (16 of 23) rather than percentages (1.2% of 1.7%)?

Table 4: The annualised costs were reported. Can the authors please explain in the statistical analysis section how the annualised costs were calculated?

Table 5: The total number of patients with at least one-year follow up is 792. However, Table 4 says 760 had at least one-year follow up time. Can the authors explain why 32 patients were not included in Table 4?

Discussion

Line 270: survivors?

Limitations: Serogroups could not be included in the analysis. Were outpatient visits included? For IMD cases with limb disabilities, speech problems and chronic kidney impairments, physiotherapy, speech therapy and dialysis costs could be high as well.

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Reviewer #1: No

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A database study of clinical and economic burden of Invasive Meningococcal Disease in France

PONE-D-20-34991R1

Dear Dr. Marié,

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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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,

Carla Pegoraro

Division 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: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: 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: No

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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

**********

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