PONE-D-22-03454Reducing the risk of transfusion-transmitted infectious disease markers in blood and blood component donations: movement from remunerated to voluntary, non-remunerated donations in Lithuania from 2013 to 2020PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Kalibatas,

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Additional Editor Comments:

Dear Author,

The work you have done is very good.

But I have certain reservations.

Serological test always carries an element of false positivity. Was any other test done to confirm the positive status of donor?

All repetitions may be deleted.

The results sections has to be re-written and concise

1. Line 31, Please rewrite as HIV 1 and 2.

2. Line 207-215, If for statistical analysis, sample size is insufficient, need not look at the statistics.

3. Year wise statistics has not much relevance. It can be combined together

4. Line 205-208, where sufficient numbers not available, tests of significance carries no value. Such results may be omitted

5. Line 232- not complete

6. Were the TTI reactive donors contact and post test counselling done to assess the risk behaviors?

7. Line 297-98, what could be the reason for this finding?

8. Help of a statistician may be sought for better presentation of the results.

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Reducing the risk of transfusion-transmitted infectious disease markers in blood and blood component donations: movement from remunerated to voluntary, non-remunerated donations in Lithuania from 2013 to 2020

PONE-D-22-03454R1

Dear Dr.Kalibatas ,

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,

Mohamed A Yassin, MD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

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Comments to the Author

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Reviewer #1: (No Response)

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Reviewer #1: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

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Reviewer #1: Yes

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Reviewer #1: Yes

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6. Review Comments to the Author

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Reviewer #1: Dear authors in this manuscript you described about the role of voluntary non-renumerated donation in reducing the risk of transfusion transmitted infectious diseases. You responded previous reviewer’s comments very nicely, but there are minor changes can improve the manuscript.

Specific comments:

1. In this manuscript you used the term for HIV used in various different words such as somewhere you used “HIV” only while in soe places you used “HIV 1 and 2”, it would be great if you use the same term “HIV 1 and 2” in whole manuscript.

2. In introduction section line 53-60, the donor was paid for donations (12 euro from year 2015), is this practice is still in place.

3. In material and method line 125, you mentioned that blood donation was tested for serological markers for various TTIs. It would be great if you could mention the method for serological testing such as rapid test or ELISA or Chemiluminescence test.

4. You mentioned Fig 1 and Table 1 I material and method section, I feel that it should be included under result section because these are your findings of the study about annual blood donation.

5. In this manuscript you did not mention about co-infections, kindly mention if there were any co-infections (like donor was reactive for two or more TTIs).

6. In discussion line 237 you mentioned the payment 11.6 euro per donation from 2013 to 2020, while in introduction section line 53-60 you mentioned that payment increased to 12 euro from year 2015. These both are quite confusing statements. Kindly clarify.

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Reviewer #1: No

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