PONE-D-21-12903Optimizing health and nutrition status of migrant construction workers consuming multiple micronutrient fortified rice in SingaporePLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Moench Pfanner,

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.

The manuscript has been evaluated by two reviewers, and their comments are available below.

The reviewers have raised a number of major concerns. They request copyediting to ensure the language and text of the study is more readable and easy to follow. The reviewers also note concerns about the statistical analyses presented, and they request more appropriate tests to be used and a re-analyses of the data to be completed.

Could you please carefully revise the manuscript to address all comments raised?

Please submit your revised manuscript by Apr 03 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,

Jamie Royle

Associate Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal Requirements:

When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements.

1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at 

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and 

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf

2. Thank you for submitting your clinical trial to PLOS ONE and for providing the name of the registry and the registration number. The information in the registry entry suggests that your trial was registered after patient recruitment began. PLOS ONE strongly encourages authors to register all trials before recruiting the first participant in a study.

As per the journal’s editorial policy, please include in the Methods section of your paper:

a) your reasons for your delay in registering this study (after enrolment of participants started);

b) confirmation that all related trials are registered by stating: “The authors confirm that all ongoing and related trials for this drug/intervention are registered".

3. Please include additional information regarding the survey or questionnaire used in the study and ensure that you have provided sufficient details that others could replicate the analyses. For instance, if you developed a questionnaire as part of this study and it is not under a copyright more restrictive than CC-BY, please include a copy, in both the original language and English, as Supporting Information. If the original language is written in non-Latin characters, for example Amharic, Chinese, or Korean, please use a file format that ensures these characters are visible.

4. Please state whether you validated the questionnaire prior to testing on study participants. Please provide details regarding the validation group within the methods section.

5. Please expand the acronym “DSM” (as indicated in your financial disclosure) so that it states the name of your funders in full.

This information should be included in your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf.

6. Thank you for stating the following in the Competing Interests section: "The authors have declared that no competing interests exists for this publication. However, two authors have been supported financially in the beginning of the study by either being an employee of DSM (FH) or an independent consulting firm (RMP) to give input to the study design. At the time of the study implementation one author (KM) was working for 45RICE, a social enterprise dedicated to improving lives through nutrition. DSM’s financial support had no influence on the statistical analysis which was conducted independently and on writing of the article. The authors alone are responsible for the views expressed in this publication."

We note that one or more of the authors have an affiliation to the commercial funders of this research study: Ibn360 and 45RICE

a. Please provide an amended Funding Statement declaring this commercial affiliation, as well as a statement regarding the Role of Funders in your study. If the funding organization did not play a role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript and only provided financial support in the form of authors' salaries and/or research materials, please review your statements relating to the author contributions, and ensure you have specifically and accurately indicated the role(s) that these authors had in your study. You can update author roles in the Author Contributions section of the online submission form.

Please also include the following statement within your amended Funding Statement. 

“The funder provided support in the form of salaries for authors [insert relevant initials], but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The specific roles of these authors are articulated in the ‘author contributions’ section.”

If your commercial affiliation did play a role in your study, please state and explain this role within your updated Funding Statement. 

b. Please also provide an updated Competing Interests Statement declaring this commercial affiliation along with any other relevant declarations relating to employment, consultancy, patents, products in development, or marketed products, etc.  

Within your Competing Interests Statement, please confirm that this commercial affiliation does not alter your adherence to all PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials by including the following statement: "This does not alter our adherence to  PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.” (as detailed online in our guide for authors http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/competing-interests). If this adherence statement is not accurate and  there are restrictions on sharing of data and/or materials, please state these. Please note that we cannot proceed with consideration of your article until this information has been declared.

Please include both an updated Funding Statement and Competing Interests Statement in your cover letter. We will change the online submission form on your behalf.

7. We note that you have indicated that data from this study are available upon request. PLOS only allows data to be available upon request if there are legal or ethical restrictions on sharing data publicly. For more information on unacceptable data access restrictions, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-unacceptable-data-access-restrictions. 

In your revised cover letter, please address the following prompts:

a) If there are ethical or legal restrictions on sharing a de-identified data set, please explain them in detail (e.g., data contain potentially sensitive information, data are owned by a third-party organization, etc.) and who has imposed them (e.g., an ethics committee). Please also provide contact information for a data access committee, ethics committee, or other institutional body to which data requests may be sent.

b) If there are no restrictions, please upload the minimal anonymized data set necessary to replicate your study findings as either Supporting Information files or to a stable, public repository and provide us with the relevant URLs, DOIs, or accession numbers. For a list of acceptable repositories, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-recommended-repositories.

We will update your Data Availability statement on your behalf to reflect the information you provide.

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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: No

Reviewer #2: No

**********

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

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

**********

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: No

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: No

Reviewer #2: No

**********

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: A clinical trial was conducted which aimed to study the impact of consuming fortified rice for six months on nutrient levels and vital health status of migrant workers in Singapore. A high percentage of migrant workers exhibited folate and vitamin B12 deficiencies. Consuming fortified rice increased vitamin, iron, and zinc levels. In the subset of Bangladeshi migrant workers, a reduction in systolic blood pressure was observed from pre to post-intervention.

Major revisions:

1- Thoroughly proofread the manuscript. In many instances, phraseology is non-standard.

2- An underlying assumption of the chi-square test is independent samples. Thus, it is inappropriate to compare baseline and post-intervention proportions (percentages) using the chi-square test.

3- Include p-values in the text to support claims of statistical significance.

Minor revisions:

1- Abstract: The term “constitute” in the second sentence is used inappropriately.

2- Clarify the use of the terms “status” and “concentrations” in the abstract. Perhaps “levels” is a more precise term.

3- Abstract: Provide percentages of those with nutrient deficiencies.

4- Line 221: Replace the following two sentences with the suggestion below. “To minimize the inter-individual component covariance, the difference between baseline and endline measurements for each individual survey subject was calculated. P values were calculated using a one-sample t-test comparing the average difference to zero.” Suggested replacement: “Paired t-tests were used to compare baseline to post-intervention measurements.” Revise line 260 accordingly.

5- Normal distribution of data is an underlying assumption of the paired or independent t-test. Indicate if the data was checked for normality prior to applying these tests.

5- The term “endpoint” is unclear. Perhaps "post-intervention" is better.

6- Line 253: Revise: When considering the entire sample, the vital signs of the workers did not change significantly from baseline to post-intervention.

7- Line 255: Revise to: increase in the hemoglobin, ferrin, zinc, and vitamin B12 levels.

8- P-values never equal zero. Express small p-values as p < 0.001.

9- Lines 263, 266, 269, 270, 271: Within the text, provide the p-values to support the claims.

10- Throughout the manuscript, provide the frequencies that correspond to the percentages.

11- State and justify the study’s target sample size with a pre-study statistical power calculation.

The power calculation should include: (1) the estimated outcomes in each group; (2) the α (type I) error level; (3) the statistical power (or the β (type II) error level); (4) the target sample size and (5) for continuous outcomes, the standard deviation of the measurements.

Reviewer #2: Abstract - Need data to be showed to indicate the improvement of nutrtional status (as mentioned)

Introduction - 1.Explain the relationship between nutrient deficiencies in relation to homocystein and blood pressure.

2. Are there the previous studies / data of nutritional status of male worker in Singapore ? why is important compare to other group of population?

Method 1. Expain about how to select the study site ? and sample size calculation ?

2. Participant was given 500 g cooked rice per day or per meal (line no .119,126)

3. Line 181-184 ...100 g uncooked rice equal to how much for cooked rice?

4. Explain about the nutrients level which participant was recieved form fortified rice / day

5. Blood collection for serum Zn need to be collected, prepared with special condition to prevent contatimination e.g. all supplied used for blood collection need to be the trace element free apparatus (https://www.izincg.org/new-blog-1/2021/1/10/comparison-of-laboratory-instrument-types-for-analysis-of-plasma-or-serum-zinc-concentration) ... For my opinion, results of serum Zn may not be reliable.

6. How to control confounding factors e.g. life stye, diet, genetic

7. What 's the QC procedure / or data of refference materials for the biochemical data.

8. Why the author used independent t-test ? (since participants are the same group)

Results

1. Data need to be revised if statistical analysis would change

2. Restults of serum Zn should be removed since they not reliable

3. I would suggest that the data should be presented for both pre - and post-in the same table / figure

and the text need to be changed accordingly

4. The text need to be re-write to be more clearly and logically manner (make it mor easy to understand)

Discussion and conclusion

1. Line 287. What's the indicator which show " micronutrient deficiency was commonly reported amongst the male migrant worker" line 374 "This study has shown that hidden hunger is highly prevalent" in this study

2. Any other underlining cause or confounding factor contributed in the results e.g. life stye, diet, genetic

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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: 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.

PONE-D-21-12903R1Optimizing health and nutrition status of migrant construction workers consuming multiple micronutrient fortified rice in SingaporePLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Moench Pfanner,

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. The concerns noted by the reviewers have been addressed. However, during my own review of the manuscript I noted some potential ethical concerns that should be addressed before the manuscript is published: Your clinical trial was conducted in a dormitory. Your manuscript indicates that 140 of the ~180 members of the dormitory consented to participate in the study. Please update your manuscript to indicate what food individuals who did not consent to take part received. Did they also receive the fortified rice? If individuals that did not consent to take part were given the fortified rice, despite not consenting to take part in the study, please discuss how the associated ethical concerns with this were mitigated.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Aug 29 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,

George Vousden

Deputy Editor in Chief

PLOS ONE

[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: 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)

**********

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.

PONE-D-21-12903R2Optimizing health and nutrition status of migrant construction workers consuming multiple micronutrient fortified rice in SingaporePLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Moench Pfanner,

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 see below for additional comments from the editor that require a response.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Nov 12 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,

Callam Davidson

Editorial Office

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments:

The following content currently found in your Financial Disclosure should be relocated to your Competing Interests: ‘RMP works at ibn360 and received financial support by the funder for consultancy. KM was affiliated at 45RICE at the time of the study, a social for-profit business by selling a product or service to the public and acquiring funds through sales. FH was employed by DNP at the time of the study.’

Please confirm whether the informed consent was written or verbal, and include this information in your Methods.

Line 77: Please update ‘1960’s’ to ‘1960s’.

Line 121: Please update ‘andS2’ to ‘and S2’.

Your TREND checklist is missing details of how sample size was calculated, however this information is contained within the manuscript (at lines 238-245). Please update your checklist to reflect this.

Please also cite your TREND checklist in the Methods.

Your protocol mentions adverse event monitoring, but this is not reported in the manuscript – please update your manuscript and TREND checklist to include this information.

There is a discrepancy between the protocol and clinical trail registry information at https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04343508. Your primary and secondary endpoints do not match. Please explain this discrepancy and ensure the correct information is reported in the manuscript. Primary and secondary outcomes ought to be clearly demarcated in the Abstract, Methods, and the Results.

Line 204: Please state the number of randomly selected workers from whom additional blood was planned for collection (I believe this information is located at line 270).

Line 245: The underpowered nature of the study needs to be stated as a limitation in your Discussion.

Line 248: Please include the rationale for this deviation from the protocol.

Line 298: Please updated to ‘statistically significant’.

Line 305: Please justify the decision not to perform statistical analysis. I do not feel that the data presented in Table 3 necessarily support the statements on lines 304-307.

Table 3: Please consider including gridlines to make this table easier to read.

Line 320: Please avoid overstating conclusions based on the findings presented – please temper the statement ‘an effective strategy’ by adding ‘potentially’, or similar.

Line 411: In a similar vein, please temper or remove the statement ‘multi-micronutrient-fortified rice may be the ideal vehicle to optimize the health status’, as the findings from this study cannot support this claim.

Line 426: From the information presented, it appears BAW may qualify for authorship based on ICMJE criteria. Please review https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/authorship and determine whether BAW ought to be included as an author.

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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

**********

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: (No Response)

**********

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

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

**********

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: (No Response)

**********

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 Response)

**********

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)

**********

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.

PONE-D-21-12903R3Optimizing health and nutrition status of migrant construction workers consuming multiple micronutrient fortified rice in Singapore​PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Moench Pfanner,

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.

Thank you very much for your continued work on revising the submitted manuscript. The manuscript has been evaluated by a reviewer and they have provided minor comments which may be seen below. 

Could you please revise the manuscript to carefully address the concerns raised?

Please submit your revised manuscript by Feb 27 2023 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,

Richard Ali

Associate 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.

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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)

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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

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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

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: Minor Revisions:

1- Tables 1 and 3: Remove the equals sign in the table header "n=".

2- Line 304 contains a grammatical error; the verb is missing. "and none of the subjects a severe adverse effect (SAE)."

3- Line 437: Replace "pick up" with "detect".

Note that line numbers refer to those in the track changes version of the manuscript.

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Reviewer #1: No

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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.

Optimizing health and nutrition status of migrant construction workers consuming multiple micronutrient fortified rice in Singapore

PONE-D-21-12903R4

Dear Dr. Moench Pfanner,

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,

James Mockridge

Staff Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Abstract, line 36: in view of a comment in a previous decision regarding overstating conclusions, please ensure that this is also attended to in the Abstract. Please change to: Our study demonstrates that fortified rice may have a positive impact on male migrant...."

Please make this change before supplying the final files for your manuscript.