Gender differences in dry eye disease symptoms associated with psychological health indicators among adults using mobile mental health apps

Hyojin Kim; Youngju An; Won Ju Hwang

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0278921

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionApril 30, 2022
5 Sep 2022 Decision Letter - Keisuke Suzuki, Editor PONE-D-22-12671Gender Differences in Dry Eye Disease symptoms associated with Psychological Health indicators among Adults using mobile mental health apps.PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Hwang, 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 Oct 20 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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If you have no competing interests, please state "The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.", as detailed online in our guide for authors at http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submit-now This information should be included in your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. [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: The manuscript entitled “Gender Differences in Dry Eye Disease symptoms associated with Psychological Health indicators among Adults using mobile mental health apps” was an interesting research. The following comments can help the authors to improve it: 1-Please follow the journal instruction to provide a structured abstract if possible. 2-The whole manuscript needs to be revised in terms of English language. 3-The reference numbers in the main text are not sequential, and need to be corrected. 4-Abbreviations need to be presented in their full form in the first place that they are used. 5-The introduction section is so brief and the gap of knowledge needs to be explained with more details. 6- More information about the App needs to be added to the manuscript. 7-More information about the settings of the study and the reasons for excluding patients aged 61 or more need to be added. 8-As the number of women was higher than men, is there any possibility for bias in reporting the results? Why didn’t the researchers recruit the same number of patients for males and females? Reviewer #2: In Result part: 1. Line 94-95: The first sentence was wrong. Please remove. 2. It would be better result if the author can analyses more in each age because as we know that dry eye mostly happens in aging female. ****** 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: Chulaluck Tangmonkongvoragul ******** [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. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: comments.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0278921.r001
Revision 1
8 Oct 2022 Author Response Dear editor: We would like to thank you and the reviewers of the Plos One for taking the time to review our article. We revised the manuscript, based on your comments. The changes are summarized below: Reviewer #1: Comment The manuscript entitled “Gender Differences in Dry Eye Disease symptoms associated with Psychological Health indicators among Adults using mobile mental health apps” was an interesting research. The following comments can help the authors to improve it: 1-Please follow the journal instruction to provide a structured abstract if possible. [Response] Thank you for your comments. We revised it to be a structured abstract. 2-The whole manuscript needs to be revised in terms of English language. [Response] Thank you for your comments. The manuscript was edited by English speaker. 3-The reference numbers in the main text are not sequential, and need to be corrected. [Response] Thank you for your comments. We confirmed the reference numbers again. Also, 6 references (number of 9, 10, 11, 12, 16, 17) have been added. 4-Abbreviations need to be presented in their full form in the first place that they are used. [Response] Thank you for your comments. We have corrected the abbreviations to the submission format. 5-The introduction section is so brief and the gap of knowledge needs to be explained with more details. [Response] Thank you for your comments. We added the introduction section. (Page 4, lines 61, 66-71) 6- More information about the App needs to be added to the manuscript. [Response] Thank you for your comments. We added the App information in method section. (Page 4, lines 87-89) 7. More information about the settings of the study and the reasons for excluding patients aged 61 or more need to be added. [Response] We agree with your comments. We added the reasons for excluding patients aged 61 or more and references. (Page 5, lines 95-98) The previous study has demonstrated that over 60 age was a significant risk factor for dry eye symptoms. Therefore, older participants over 60 were not included. Also, we revised the manuscript to be exactly 60 years old. In addition, because it was reported that those over the age of 60 who used health apps had low self-efficacy, we excluded those over the age of 60. 8-As the number of women was higher than men, is there any possibility for bias in reporting the results? Why didn’t the researchers recruit the same number of patients for males and females? [Response] Thank you for your comments. There were more women who participated to use the health app. Therefore, we did not adjust to match the number of men and women in our statistical analysis. Since we showed the analysis results for men and women separately in Tables 1, 2, and 3, we think that it would not affected the results. Reviewer #2: Comment In Result part: 1. Line 94-95: The first sentence was wrong. Please remove. [Response] Thank you for your comments. We removed the sentence. 2. It would be better result if the author can analyses more in each age because as we know that dry eye mostly happens in aging female. [Response] Many thanks for your comments. We considered dividing the analysis into each age groups, but we did not include such an analysis because we excluded the old female group by adding to the reasons for excluding the age of 60 or older in the method. In addition, these sentences were described to the Discussion section. (page 16, line 303) Sincerely yours, Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers_2.doc https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0278921.r002
17 Oct 2022 Decision Letter - Keisuke Suzuki, Editor PONE-D-22-12671R1Gender Differences in Dry Eye Disease symptoms associated with Psychological Health indicators among Adults using mobile mental health apps.PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Hwang, 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 Dec 01 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. Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript: A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'. A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'. An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'. If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter. If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols. We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Keisuke Suzuki, MD, PhD Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice. Additional Editor Comments (if provided): The manuscript has been improved, but please make further minor revisions to the manuscript in accordance with the reviewers' comments. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] 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: (No Response) ******** 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 ****** 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: I appreciate the authors for their time and efforts to revise the manuscript. However, it still needs to be improved in the following areas: 1- Again, the whole manuscript needs to be revised in terms of English language. Moreover, please be consistent when using (.), (-) and (,). 2- To report the results, we unusually use “sex” which is categorized to “male” and “female”. Please consider these two in the whole manuscript. 3- In the introduction section, the terms sex and gender were used next to each other. Please only use one term "sex". 4- Please revise the first paragraph of the methods section, if you are explaining inclusion and exclusion criteria in other paragraphs. 5- More information about the App needs to be added to the manuscript. Adding only two lines to the methods section is not adequate. Please add some figures of the App, too. 6- More information about the settings of the study needs to be added. 7- In the tables, there are a number of cells which show no label or figure. Please complete the tables or merge cells, etc. ****** 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 ******** [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.0278921.r003
Revision 2
28 Oct 2022 Author Response I appreciate the authors for their time and efforts to revise the manuscript. However, it still needs to be improved in the following areas: 1- Again, the whole manuscript needs to be revised in terms of English language. Moreover, please be consistent when using (.), (-) and (,). →Answer: We have revised all the marks to be consistent throughout the paper. Also, the manuscript was edited by an English native speaker. 2- To report the results, we unusually use “sex” which is categorized to “male” and “female”. Please consider these two in the whole manuscript. →Answer: We have revised all “men / women” to “male / female” throughout the paper. 3- In the introduction section, the terms sex and gender were used next to each other. Please only use one term "sex". →Answer: We have revised all “gender” to “sex” throughout the paper. 4- Please revise the first paragraph of the methods section, if you are explaining inclusion and exclusion criteria in other paragraphs. →Answer: We have consolidated the paragraphs and modified them to fit the context. 5- More information about the App needs to be added to the manuscript. Adding only two lines to the methods section is not adequate. Please add some figures of the App, too. →Answer: We have added some figures for improvement. 6- More information about the settings of the study needs to be added. →Answer: As a primary study, this study was first aimed at examining the participants' mental health and dry eye symptoms. In the future, we plan to have participants use the healing program on a regular basis through a mobile app to investigate the intervention effect. 7- In the tables, there are a number of cells which show no label or figure. Please complete the tables or merge cells, etc. →Answer: We follow the reviewer’s suggestion. Best regards Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Review comments_1023_1.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0278921.r004
24 Nov 2022 Decision Letter - Keisuke Suzuki, Editor Gender Differences in Dry Eye Disease symptoms associated with Psychological Health indicators among Adults using mobile mental health apps. PONE-D-22-12671R2 Dear Dr. Hwang, 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, Keisuke Suzuki, MD, PhD Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): The authors have well addressed comments raised by reviewers. Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0278921.r005
Formally Accepted
5 Jan 2023 Acceptance Letter - Keisuke Suzuki, Editor PONE-D-22-12671R2 Gender differences in dry eye disease symptoms associated with psychological health indicators among adults using mobile mental health apps Dear Dr. Hwang: 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. Keisuke Suzuki Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0278921.r006

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