Peer Review History

Original SubmissionApril 4, 2022
Decision Letter - Anjani Kumar Tiwari, Editor

PONE-D-22-09902Biological effects of polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) and decabromodiphenyl ether (BDE-209) exposure on catsPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Ishizuka,

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.

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ACADEMIC EDITOR: The language of this manuscript is not very appropriate therefore author should rewrite and recheck it. Besides that few corrections are suggested by reviewer which should be incorporated in revised manuscript./>==============================

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Anjani Kumar Tiwari, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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 [This work was financially supported by Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B) (KN, No. 16H02989), Challenging Exploratory Research (YI, No. 17K20038) and Scientific Research (A) (MI, No. 21H04919) from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and partly supported by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT), Japan, to a project on Joint Usage/Research Center Leading Academia in Marine and Environmental Research (LaMer), Ehime University. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.]

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Additional Editor Comments:

Minor corrections are required before reconsideration.

[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

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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: 1.As the authors claim that this is the first study to provide information on the biochemical effects of organohalogen compounds, so some more relevant studies along with risk assessment study is important. Highlight on that part.

2.Is it possible to study the biochemical effects with other organohalogen compounds (OHC) in cats (instead of PCBs and PBDEs)? Enlightenment is required.

3.Some current references (after the year: 2019) are required to the relevant field.

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Reviewer #1: No

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Revision 1

Dear Dr. Anjani Kumar Tiwari

Submission no: PONE-D-22-09902

Submission title: Biological effects of polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) and decabromodiphenyl ether (BDE-209) exposure on cats

Thank you very much for your letter dated 10 Jun 2022 with the reviewer’s comments.

The following are our responses to reviewer’s comments regarding this manuscript. The revised words or sentences have been highlight in yellow.

ACADEMIC EDITOR:

The language of this manuscript is not very appropriate therefore author should rewrite and recheck it.

This manuscript was revised and checked by an experienced editor whose first language is English.

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer #1:

1.As the authors claim that this is the first study to provide information on the biochemical effects of organohalogen compounds, so some more relevant studies along with risk assessment study is important. Highlight on that part.

It was revised and highlighted on the parts of the abstract, introduction, and discussion. (Page 2, Line 41-44, Page 4, Line 65-69, and Page 21-22, Line 407-409) In addition, references related to the risk assessment of OHCs are shown below;

Ma et al., 2017. Environmental Research. 2017;155:116-22.

Mizukawa et al., Environ Sci Technol. 2016;50(1):444-52.

Zheng et al., 2015. Environment International. 2015;78:1-7.

Shoeib et al., 2012. Environmental Pollution. 2012;169:175-82.

Nomiyama et al., 2022. Science of The Total Environment. 2022;842:156490.

Walter et al., 2017. BMC Vet Res. 2017;13(1):120.

Mensching et al., 2012. J Toxicol Environ Health A. 2012;75(4):201-12.

Norrgran et al., 2015. Environ Sci Technol. 2015;49(8):5107-14.

2.Is it possible to study the biochemical effects with other organohalogen compounds (OHC) in cats (instead of PCBs and PBDEs)? Enlightenment is required.

It’s possible to study with other organohalogen compounds such as DDTs, but in this study, we conducted this experiment with exposure to the PCBs and BDE-209 because there are several biomonitoring studies that detected PCBs and PBDEs have been commonly found in the blood of pet cats, and indicated health effects such as hyperthyroidism and type 2 diabetes mellitus. On the other hand, it has already been reported that the major DDT metabolite, p,p'-DDE, was the major OHC in Pakistani cat serum (N=20) and ranged between 1 and 2150 ng/g lipid weight (Ali et al., 2013, Sci Total Environ, 449:29-36), suggesting it needs to monitoring and risk assessment for other OHCs in future. This reason is highlighted in the parts of introduction (Page 3-4, Line 64-68) and discussion (Page 17, Line 301-312).

3.Some current references (after the year: 2019) are required to the relevant field.

Since the studies of PCB and PBDE residues in pet cats are limited recently (year: 2020-2022), these below references related to our study were added to this manuscript:

Mizukawa H, Nomiyama K. Biotransformation of Brominated Compounds by Pet Dogs and Cats. In: Pastorinho MR, Sousa ACA, editors. Pets as Sentinels, Forecasters and Promoters of Human Health. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2020. p. 107-21.

Pastorinho M, Sousa ACA. Pets as Sentinels, Forecasters and Promoters of Human Health. Pets as Sentinels, Forecasters and Promoters of Human Health. 2020.

Nomiyama K, Yamamoto Y, Eguchi A, Nishikawa H, Mizukawa H, Yokoyama N, et al. Health impact assessment of pet cats caused by organohalogen contaminants by serum metabolomics and thyroid hormone analysis. Science of The Total Environment. 2022;842:156490. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.156490.

Attachments
Attachment
Submitted filename: 2. Response to Reviewers.docx
Decision Letter - Hans-Joachim Lehmler, Editor

Biological effects related to exposure to polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) and decabromodiphenyl ether (BDE-209) on cats

PONE-D-22-09902R1

Dear Dr. Ishizuka,

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,

Hans-Joachim Lehmler, PhD

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 #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

**********

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: Yes

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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: Authors did all the work as per the comments raised in a previous round of review. Now, I think it is suitable for the publication.

Thanks

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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

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Formally Accepted
Acceptance Letter - Hans-Joachim Lehmler, Editor

PONE-D-22-09902R1

Biological effects related to exposure to polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) and decabromodiphenyl ether (BDE-209) on cats

Dear Dr. Ishizuka:

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. Hans-Joachim Lehmler

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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