PONE-D-22-14442Prevalence of Schistosoma mansoni infection among fishermen in Busega district, TanzaniaPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Winfrida John,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript ‘Prevalence of Schistosoma mansoni infection among fishermen in Busega district, Tanzania’ to PLOS ONE. Your manuscript has been assessed by 2 reviewers. There are useful comments and suggestions to be improved the manuscript.  One of the reviewers have highligned several major concerns and questions in the sanitized file.   Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

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Kind regards,

Wannaporn Ittiprasert, Ph.D

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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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

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: The paper seeks to address a topical issue of schistosomiasis among the fishermen in Tanzania. The paper determines the prevalence and risk factors for Schistosoma mansoni infection among fishermen in Tanzania. This is timely and very relevant as most studies focus on school-aged children. However, the authors need to address some issues highlighted in the reviewed manuscript before the paper can be considered for publication.

Reviewer #2: Comments to the Author

This manuscript reviews and assesses the current situation of people infected with Schistosoma mansoni in Busega district, Tanzania. Very interesting correlations between socioeconomic status, education, and infection levels were found in this study. Whereby the group of fishermen, a group which is at high risk of getting infected by schistosomes was investigated in more detail. The manuscript elaborated on the differences in sanitation access and management, highlighting the role of fishermen as reservoir hosts. This highlighted that treatment of only the group of pupils with praziquantel was not sufficient to control the current infection events. In order to record infection spreads more precisely, it would have been very interesting to also record the fishing-routes of selected infected and healthy fishermen. Furthermore, an additional figure containing a map showing the exact positions of sampled persons would be desirable to provide a better visual overview.

Especially the significant connection between the age and the status of infection was demonstrated in an impressive way. In addition, it was very delightful to get more information about the correlation of current infections and social status, like marital status, education level etc. However, the resolution to distinguish the different levels of educational level could be more detailed.

Weaknesses of the statistical analysis and sampling were critically discussed in the “Limitations” chapter. The discussed outlook, how the protocol can be adapted in future studies, showed a critical analysis of the own data.

The data presented, clearly underline the conclusions, which were made. Likewise, the conduct of the study, such as survey execution and evaluation, as well as the process of sample preparation were described in a technically clear and detailed manner. Subsequently, the statistics were described in an appropriate manner.

The presented data clearly show that education, social status and hygiene play an essential role in the occurrence of infections. This demonstrated that educational campaigns are essential in the fight against infectious diseases such as schistosomiasis. In addition, the manuscript was written in clear, scientific language.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: PONE-D-22-14442_reviewer.pdf

Prevalence of Schistosoma mansoni infection among fishermen in Busega district, Tanzania

PONE-D-22-14442R1

Dear Dr. Winfrida John,

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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Kind regards,

Wannaporn Ittiprasert, Ph.D

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Thank you for revising the manuscript to address the reviewer's concerns. This study contributes to our understanding in the Schistosoma mansoni infection among fishermen in the epidemic area, and should be informative to the field.

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

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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

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

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: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: This manuscript reviews and assesses the current situation of people infected with Schistosoma mansoni in Busega district, Tanzania. Whereby the group of fishermen, a group which is at high risk of getting infected by schistosomes was investigated in more detail.

In general, the points previously noted have been clarified and revised in this manuscript.

In order to record infection spreads more precisely, it would have been very interesting to also record the fishing-routes of selected infected and healthy fishermen. Furthermore, an additional figure containing a map showing the exact positions of sampled persons would be desirable to provide a better visual overview. Visualizing these data, as well as locating the various anchorages of fishers, could improve the data with further clues in terms of the epidemiology. These data would be of great interest to include in a follow-up publication.

With the additions, the Conclusion was made more comprehensible. In addition, the importance and lack of knowledge of the 18+ age group was explored in more detail and depth.

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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

Reviewer #2: No

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