PONE-D-22-27386Measures of malaria transmission, infection, and disease in an area bordering two districts with and without sustained indoor residual spraying of insecticide in UgandaPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Nankabirwa,

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Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Additional Editor Comments:

After careful consideration, we felt that your manuscript requires substantial revision, following which it can possibly be reconsidered, thus governing the decision of a “major revision”. According to the reviewer #2, it is not clear whether the current MS is hypothesis-driven research. Consequently, the Authors should clarify the overall purpose of the MS. At this point, the reviewer suggests that additional data may be necessary to address some statements raised by the authors (epidemiological, entomological and environmental data).  A significant number of issues raised by both reviewers should be clarified and/or adjust. Finally, it is essential to incorporate the limitations of the study otherwise it might compromise data interpretation.   For your guidance, a copy of the reviewers' comments was included below.

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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: Partly

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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: Great piece of work and written in a very readable way, however, there are few occasions were mosquito species were written inappropriately. For instance, line 173 and Table 2 but also some minor grammatical errors such as in the second line (i.e. IRS is) of the first paragraph of the discussion, figure 3 (i.e. 211 less that) and line 55.

Additionally, the manuscript lack sufficient references throughout, For instance the setup of the CDC light trap has not been backed up at all, etc.

The EIR estimation was correctly done, however, the biting rate should be corrected using coefficient described by Okumu et al, 2010.

Reviewer #2: I thank the author for submitting this manuscript and for the strong work done in its preparation. I think it is well written and a very nice description of the epidemiological situation in western Uganda. My only problem with it, and the reason I have recommended it to be rejected, is that I do not see it as hypothesis-driven research. There is no clearly stated hypothesis in the introduction, with the closest statement that could be considered a goal of the manuscript being "...it is important to better understand the underlying epidemiology of malaria in areas where resurgence has occurred." And while I completely agree with this statement, and feel this manuscript does this very well, I do not think that alone fits the criteria for publication.

The conclusions offer some guidance as to how this study could be more hypothesis-driven, though the authors rightly point out that the manuscript does not answer those outstanding questions as to what the causes of the resurgence are or were. It is possible that there are sufficient data to answer this that were not reported in the manuscript, though the short time frame of the longitudinal data collection, as well as the dual seasonality of malaria in Uganda, make this unlikely. Additional data that I feel would be necessary to answer the above question would be:

- at least one full year of longitudinal data (epidemiological and entomological)

- indoor and outdoor vector biting and infectivity rates (and EIRs)

- species-specific infectivity rates

- IRS residual efficacy data

- mobility data, both between study areas and the broader region

- climate, weather, and environmental data

- other intervention coverage, such as case management indicators if available

The other thought I had when reading the manuscript is that the authors intended it to be focused on the value of using different indicators to measure transmission intensity. If this were in fact the case I once again feel that it would need to be more focused on a specific hypothesis, for example using incidence episodes as opposed to prevalence to show recent changes in transmission intensity. This would also require additional data, likely including different study sites.

Once again I thank the author for the submission and congratulate all authors on the overall quality of the work done, and hope they find these comments useful.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes: James Colborn, PhD, MSPH

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Measures of malaria transmission, infection, and disease in an area bordering two districts with and without sustained indoor residual spraying of insecticide in Uganda

PONE-D-22-27386R1

Dear Dr. Nankabirwa,

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,

Luzia H Carvalho, Ph.D.

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

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: (No Response)

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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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: (No Response)

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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

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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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: I appreciate the authors' candid responses to my comments, and for taking the time to consider and respond to them. I appreciate the need and desire to publish data and results as they become available rather than waiting for all potential questions to be unequivocally resolved. I look forward to reading any future work that helps to further address the important questions raised in this manuscript.

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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: Yes: James Colborn

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