Peer Review History

Original SubmissionOctober 18, 2022
Decision Letter - Pierre Roques, Editor

PONE-D-22-28805Maternal, fetal, and perinatal outcomes among pregnant women admitted to an Ebola treatment center in the Democratic Republic of Congo, 2018–2020PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Philpott,

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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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Pierre Roques, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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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

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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: No

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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: Overall this study by Philpott and colleagues adds to the growing body of knowledge on EVD in pregnancy. the manuscript is well written and the results well presented.

A general comment would be to read carefully through and correct typographical errors prior to resubmission/publication.

Introduction and rationale: this was well written and provided enough background information justifying the study

Methods: the methods are succinct and well described

Results: the results are clear and presented in full

Discussion and conclusions: while the discussion supports the results I would like the authors to elaborate a little more on possible reasons for the mortality relative risk of 1.0. the study objectives indicate you wish to compare mortality in pregnant and non-pregnant women and while your findings are interesting and supported both by a recent systematic review Kayem et al 2022 and some studies from the West African Ebola outbreak, you donot highlight these and right now your discussion on this finding is a single sentence at the end of your discussion section. I would like you to give us your opinion on possible reasons why no difference in mortality is found.

Additionally based on the findings in your study, what are your recommendations for practice, research and policy.

Data availability: Data not provided because authors indicate restrictions apply. they would need to specify the restrictions.

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Reviewer #1: No

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Revision 1

Introduction and rationale: this was well written and provided enough background information justifying the study.

Thank you.

Methods: the methods are succinct and well described.

Thank you.

Results: the results are clear and presented in full.

Thank you.

Discussion and conclusions: while the discussion supports the results, I would like the authors to elaborate a little more on possible reasons for the mortality relative risk of 1.0. The study objectives indicate you wish to compare mortality in pregnant and non-pregnant women and while your findings are interesting and supported both by a recent systematic review Kayem et al 2022 and some studies from the West African Ebola outbreak, you do not highlight these and right now your discussion on this finding is a single sentence at the end of your discussion section. I would like you to give us your opinion on possible reasons why no difference in mortality is found.

Additionally based on the findings in your study, what are your recommendations for practice, research and policy.

Thank you for your requested clarification. We have expanded our discussion with additional consideration for why we did not identify an increased risk of death among pregnant patients in the study and included a reference to the Kayem et al review as well as data from the West Africa Outbreak. Likewise, we have expanded recommendations for future data collection to include pregnant women as an important subgroup.

Attachments
Attachment
Submitted filename: Reviewer_Replies.docx
Decision Letter - Pierre Roques, Editor

Maternal, fetal, and perinatal outcomes among pregnant women admitted to an Ebola treatment center in the Democratic Republic of Congo, 2018–2020

PONE-D-22-28805R1

Dear Dr. Philpott,

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,

Pierre Roques, 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

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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: No

**********

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: All my comments have been appropriately addressed and I recommend that the manuscript is accepted for publication

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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

**********

Formally Accepted
Acceptance Letter - Pierre Roques, Editor

PONE-D-22-28805R1

Maternal, fetal, and perinatal outcomes among pregnant women admitted to an Ebola treatment center in the Democratic Republic of Congo, 2018–2020

Dear Dr. Philpott:

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. Pierre Roques

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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