Association of fish intake with menstrual pain: A cross-sectional study of the Japan Environment and Children’s Study

Emi Yokoyama; Takashi Takeda; Zen Watanabe; Noriyuki Iwama; Michihiro Satoh; Takahisa Murakami; Kasumi Sakurai; Naomi Shiga; Nozomi Tatsuta; Masatoshi Saito; Masahito Tachibana; Takahiro Arima; Shinichi Kuriyama; Hirohito Metoki; Nobuo Yaegashi

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0269042

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionFebruary 6, 2022
2 Mar 2022 Decision Letter - Antonio Simone Laganà, Editor PONE-D-22-03678Association of fish intake with menstrual pain: an adjunct study of the Japan Environment and Children's StudyPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Takeda, 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 Apr 16 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. 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Considering this point, I invite authors to perform the required minor revisions. [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: Dear Editor I read interestingly the manuscript entitled “Association of fish intake with menstrual pain: an adjunct study of the Japan Environment and Children’s Study”. The study seems conducted carefully. Title Authors can indicate that it is a cross-sectional study - Please prepare a list of abbreviations at the beginning of the Meta DATA. Abstracts 1) Abstract should be informative, background did not explain the question of this review and the answer which authors search for it 2) Keywords: are these keywords are Mesh terms? Word that serves as a keyword, as to the meaning of that condition must be a Mesh term Introduction The Introduction needs adjustments in order to answer these questions: - What are the uncertainties and conflicts that underlie the hypotheticals? - How important is the evidence of studies for the healthy individuals and patients? - What is the focused clinical question your research will address? Discussion - The authors should list and shortly discuss the limitation of their study, for instance their limited number of participants and small sample size and also variation between type of fish that may affect the results Reviewer #2: The fish intake before delivery or when she was little is unknown, and I think that this point is more important to investigate the association between fish consumption and dysmenorrhea. It must be described as a big limitation. However, it is epidemiologically interested the results and your discussion about the mechanism. ****** 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: Yes:** Satoshi Yoneda [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. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0269042.r001
Revision 1
2 Apr 2022 Author Response Dear Editors and Reviewers Thank you very much for reviewing our manuscript and for offering valuable advice. We have addressed your comments with point-by-point responses and revised the manuscript accordingly. Responses to the Comments by the reviewer 1: Thank you very much for taking the time to point out a number of critical points. Title Authors can indicate that it is a cross-sectional study Response: Thank you for your kind suggestion. We have modified the "Title" to “Association of fish intake with menstrual pain: A cross-sectional study of the Japan Environment and Children’s Study” - Please prepare a list of abbreviations at the beginning of the Meta DATA. Response: Thank you for your helpful recommendation. We have added a list of abbreviations before the "Abstract" section. Abstracts 1) Abstract should be informative, background did not explain the question of this review and the answer which authors search for it Response: Thank you very much for your invaluable comments. As you importantly pointed out, the background of the Abstract was not adequately described. Therefore, we have enriched the background as follows. “The relationship between fish eating habits and menstrual pain is unknown. Elucidating this relationship can inform dietary guidance for reproductive age women with menstrual pain.” (Page 4, Lines 36–38). 2) Keywords: are these keywords are Mesh terms? Word that serves as a keyword, as to the meaning of that condition must be a Mesh term Response: Thank you for your helpful recommendation. We have modified the Keywords to Mesh terms. “dysmenorrhea, menstrual pain, cross-sectional study, feeding behavior.” (On submission system) Introduction The Introduction needs adjustments in order to answer these questions: - What are the uncertainties and conflicts that underlie the hypotheticals? - What is the focused clinical question your research will address? Response: Thank you very much for your invaluable comments. We apologize for the insufficient information about uncertainties in previous reports and clinical questions. The clinical question is whether fish consumption is effective for dysmenorrhea. As you have mentioned, we have supplemented the "Introduction" section. “Thus, it is uncertain whether fish consumption is effective for dysmenorrhea as previous studies have not yielded consistent results due to small sample sizes.” (Pages 6–7, Lines 86–88) - How important is the evidence of studies for the healthy individuals and patients? Response: Thank you for pointing this out. As you mentioned, there was a lack of description of the importance of our study to healthy individuals and patients. Thus, I have added the following description in the Introduction section. “Elucidating this relationship is informative because it can inform dietary guidance for reproductive age women with menstrual pain and may have a positive impact on many aspects of personal life. In addition, this relationship may be useful to healthy individuals in their daily food choices.” (Page 7, Lines 89–93) Discussion - The authors should list and shortly discuss the limitation of their study, for instance their limited number of participants and small sample size and also variation between type of fish that may affect the results Response: Thank you very much for your important comments. As you pointed out, there are limitations regarding the limited number of patients and small sample size. Therefore, we have modified the Discussion section to include this limitation. “Second, the sample size was relatively small; thus, our findings should be interpreted with caution.” (Page 24, Lines 324–325) Also, as you mentioned, our questionnaire did not distinguish variation between type of fish, which may have affected the results. We have modified the text in the Discussion section, as follows: “Third, this study assessed only fish intake frequency and may not accurately reflect fish consumption or type of fish; therefore, we could not assess the total intake of each nutrient, including n-3 fatty acids.” (Page 24, Lines 325–327) In addition, the strength of our study lies in the ability to adjust for many covariates. Thus, we modified as the introductory paragraph of the Discussion follows: “In the present study, we adjusted for many covariates, and only few studies have been able to adjust for such a large number covariates to examine the associations between fish intake frequency and the risk of menstrual pain. To our knowledge, this is the first study performed with adequate meaningful power to examine associations between fish intake frequency and the risk of menstrual pain.” (Page 20, Lines 261–265) Responses to the Comments by the reviewer 2: 1. The fish intake before delivery or when she was little is unknown, and I think that this point is more important to investigate the association between fish consumption and dysmenorrhea. It must be described as a big limitation. However, it is epidemiologically interested the results and your discussion about the mechanism. Response: Thank you very much for your important comments. Our study does not have data on fish intake frequency before delivery. As you importantly pointed out, whether long-term fish intake is associated with dysmenorrhea or a short-term effect could not be demonstrated in this study and is a limitation of the present study. Therefore, we have modified the Discussion section to include this limitation. “In addition, the influence of non-reported food items, caloric intake, or prenatal fish intake could not be excluded.” (Page 24, Lines 330–331). Again, thank you for giving us the opportunity to strengthen our manuscript with your valuable comments and queries. We have worked hard to incorporate your feedback and hope that these revisions persuade you to accept our submission. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response_to_Reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0269042.r002
13 May 2022 Decision Letter - Antonio Simone Laganà, Editor Association of fish intake with menstrual pain: A cross-sectional study of the Japan Environment and Children's Study PONE-D-22-03678R1 Dear Dr. Takeda, 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, Antonio Simone Laganà, M.D., Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Authors performed the required corrections, which were positively evaluated by the reviewers. I am pleased to accept this paper for publication. 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 ******** 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 ****** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: N/A ****** 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 Response) ****** 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: No ****** 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 revision of the manuscript was made, and I was satisfied with the response of the authors and do not have any more concerns. ****** 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 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0269042.r003
Formally Accepted
13 Jul 2022 Acceptance Letter - Antonio Simone Laganà, Editor PONE-D-22-03678R1 Association of fish intake with menstrual pain: A cross-sectional study of the Japan Environment and Children’s Study Dear Dr. Takeda: 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 Dr. Antonio Simone Laganà Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0269042.r004

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