Peer Review History

Original SubmissionAugust 27, 2022
Decision Letter - Chien-Hsiang Weng, Editor

PONE-D-22-23966Global depression in Breast Cancer Patients: systematic review and meta-analysisPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Ghashghaee,

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.

==============================

ACADEMIC EDITOR: 

  • The search period has been outdated by almost one year at the time of submission, please update the search and revise the analysis.  
  • This is certainly an important topic, please address and provide the novelty and unique aspects in this study. 
  • Please response to the reviewers' comments and questions and revise the manuscript accordingly.  
==============================

Please submit your revised manuscript by Mar 13 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,

Chien-Hsiang Weng, M.D., M.P.H.

Academic 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

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2. Please include captions for your Supporting Information files at the end of your manuscript, and update any in-text citations to match accordingly. Please see our Supporting Information guidelines for more information: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/supporting-information.

[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: Partly

**********

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: 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

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: Dear Editor

This is a good manuscript reviewing “Global depression in Breast Cancer Patients: systematic review and meta-analysis”. The subject of the manuscript is fully consistent with the aims and scope of the journal « PLOS ONE». The research methodology is fully consistent with the aims declared by the authors. Their conclusions are also consistent with the set goals, however, some issues need to be reconsidered:

- Please explain all abbreviations in the abstract and manuscript.

Abstracts

1) include data sources; study eligibility criteria, participants, and interventions; study evaluation and synthesis methods; results; limitations; conclusions and implications of key findings;

2) The search was performed more than 6 month ago so I think authors should update their search

3) Keywords: are these keywords are Mesh terms? Word that serves as a keyword, as to the meaning of that condition must be a Mesh term

Introduction

The Introduction needs adjustments in order to answer these questions:

- What are the uncertainties and conflicts that underlie the hypotheticals?

- How important is the evidence of studies for the healthy individuals and patients?

- What is the focused clinical question your review will address?

- There are some sentences that are difficult to understand, and the paper needs an English reviewer. Please edit.

Methods

-List and define all variables for which data were sought (e.g., PICOS, funding sources) and any assumptions and simplifications made.

- I suggest not including in the search strategy the outcome`s terms. The search should have more sensitivity than specificity.

-Why authors a priori used a random-effects model for their analysis? Where there any signs to expect significant heterogeneity from the studies included?

.

- it is not necessary to mention all keywords and syntaxes in the method section, authors can refer to main keywords in the methods and present full search strategy and syntaxes in a supplemental file.

- The search was performed more than 6 month ago so I think authors should update their search

- What are these key words? It is appears that they are suitable for just MEDLINE search, so what about other databases? I cannot search SCOPUS with these syntaxes. If the authors use different syntaxes, they should present them, if they don’t at least present keyword in plain form not in a specific database format.

Discussion

Authors should also acknowledge some serious limitations of the study:

1. significant heterogeneity was encountered perhaps due to various regimens, doses, duration, center settings, populations enrolled etc. calling for cautious interpretation of the results. This is a serious limitation and should be included because it may significantly undermine the validity of results.

2. many of the studies suffer from significant sources of bias and this should be also taken into consideration

3. the effect in many occasions was assessed by very few studies; thus, the evidence to support it is low and should be mentioned.

Reviewer #2: To Dear Author,

Cancer is well-known associated with depression. The association have been discussed in many articles previously. For example, "Pilevarzadeh, M., Amirshahi, M., Afsargharehbagh, R., Rafiemanesh, H., Hashemi, S. M., & Balouchi, A. (2019). Global prevalence of depression among breast cancer patients: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Breast cancer research and treatment, 176, 519-533." and the topic is almost the same with your manuscript.

I suggest that your manuscript should include some novel idea about association between breast cancer and depression. In addition, provider supplemental for more detail about your systematic review and meta-analysis.

Best regards,

**********

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.

Revision 1

Response to reviewers

Editor-in-Chief

PLOS ONE

Art. No: PONE-D-22-23966

Please find the revised version of our manuscript “Global Depression in Breast Cancer Patients: systematic review and meta-analysis": which we would like to resubmit for publication as a review article in PLOS ONE.

Your comments and those of the reviewers were highly insightful and enabled us to greatly improve the quality of our manuscript. In the following pages there are our point-by-point responses to each of the comments of the reviewers as well as your own comments. Also declaration section revised and completed according to journal guideline.

Revisions in the text are shown using green highlight for additions. We hope that the revisions in the manuscript and our accompanying responses will be sufficient to make our manuscript suitable for publication in PLOS ONE.

We shall look forward to hearing from you at your earliest convenience.

Yours sincerely,

*Corresponding Author: Ahmad Ghashghaee

Email: ahmad.ghashghaee1996@gmail.com

Reviewer Number Original comments of the reviewer Reply by the author(s)

Reviews 1 Abstracts

1) include data sources; study eligibility criteria, participants, and interventions; study evaluation and synthesis methods; results; limitations; conclusions and implications of key findings;

2) The search was performed more than 6 month ago so I think authors should update their search

3) Keywords: are these keywords are Mesh terms? Word that serves as a keyword, as to the meaning of that condition must be a Mesh term 1) Since there is word limitation of Abstract, so I cannot add all the materials into this section. However some items has been added.

2) It is impossible to update the research because it is a global systematic review and it will take another 6 month. Also based on evidence, less than two years would be acceptable for a massive systematic reviews like this.

3) Keywords have been changed

Reviews 1 Introduction

The Introduction needs adjustments in order to answer these questions:

- What are the uncertainties and conflicts that underlie the hypotheticals?

- How important is the evidence of studies for the healthy individuals and patients?

- What is the focused clinical question your review will address?

- There are some sentences that are difficult to understand, and the paper needs an English reviewer. Please edit. This section has been revised.

Reviews 1 Methods

-List and define all variables for which data were sought (e.g., PICOS, funding sources) and any assumptions and simplifications made.

- I suggest not including in the search strategy the outcome`s terms. The search should have more sensitivity than specificity.

-Why authors a priori used a random-effects model for their analysis? Where there any signs to expect significant heterogeneity from the studies included?

.

- it is not necessary to mention all keywords and syntaxes in the method section, authors can refer to main keywords in the methods and present full search strategy and syntaxes in a supplemental file.

- The search was performed more than 6 month ago so I think authors should update their search

- What are these key words? It is appears that they are suitable for just MEDLINE search, so what about other databases? I cannot search SCOPUS with these syntaxes. If the authors use different syntaxes, they should present them, if they don’t at least present keyword in plain form not in a specific database format. 1) All the variables have been listed

2) Search strategy has been deleted

3) Yes, Since it is a global systematic review and we included various studies for analyzing, random-effect would be the best method for avoiding heterogeneity.

Reviews 1 Discussion

Authors should also acknowledge some serious limitations of the study:

1. significant heterogeneity was encountered perhaps due to various regimens, doses, duration, center settings, populations enrolled etc. calling for cautious interpretation of the results. This is a serious limitation and should be included because it may significantly undermine the validity of results.

2. many of the studies suffer from significant sources of bias and this should be also taken into consideration

3. the effect in many occasions was assessed by very few studies; thus, the evidence to support it is low and should be mentioned. The Limitation section has been added.

Attachments
Attachment
Submitted filename: Response to reviewers.docx
Decision Letter - Chien-Hsiang Weng, Editor

PONE-D-22-23966R1Global depression in Breast Cancer Patients: systematic review and meta-analysisPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Ghashghaee,

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.

==============================

ACADEMIC EDITOR:

  • Please address and response to the comments from Review #2.
Please ensure that your decision is justified on PLOS ONE’s publication criteria and not, for example, on novelty or perceived impact.

For Lab, Study and Registered Report Protocols: These article types are not expected to include results but may include pilot data. 

==============================

Please submit your revised manuscript by Jun 02 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,

Chien-Hsiang Weng, M.D., M.P.H.

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.

[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)

Reviewer #2: 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)

Reviewer #2: No

**********

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

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: 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 Response)

Reviewer #2: 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 Response)

Reviewer #2: 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: The revision by authors and correction that they made of the manuscript was satisfactory and I have no more concerns

Reviewer #2: To Dear Author,

Cancer is well-known associated with depression. The association have been discussed in many articles previously. For example, "Pilevarzadeh, M., Amirshahi, M., Afsargharehbagh, R., Rafiemanesh, H., Hashemi, S. M., & Balouchi, A. (2019). Global prevalence of depression among breast cancer patients: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Breast cancer research and treatment, 176, 519-533." and the topic is almost the same with your manuscript.

I suggest that your manuscript should include some novel idea about association between breast cancer and depression. In addition, provider supplemental for more detail about your systematic review and meta-analysis.

In addition, for different kinds of depression such as major depressive disorder, dysthymic disorder, and other depressive disorder, combined medications and psychotherapy are the standard treatment and should be mentioned in the introduction and conclusion section.

Best regards,

**********

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: 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.

Revision 2

Firstly, our search period is from 2000-2021 which means we had collected to more years in comparison with mentioned article. Our exclusion and inclusion criteria are different. Also we have result about depression in bearst cancer patients based on Age, stage of treatment and countries and continets which is our novelty.

This issue was not among the main objectives of our study. Our main focus in this article was the prevalence rate in different territories and the relationship between depression and the main variables.

Attachments
Attachment
Submitted filename: Response to reviewers.docx
Decision Letter - Chien-Hsiang Weng, Editor

PONE-D-22-23966R2Global depression in Breast Cancer Patients: systematic review and meta-analysisPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Ghashghaee,

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 Jul 01 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,

Chien-Hsiang Weng, M.D., M.P.H.

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:

1) The authors have addressed the comments from the reviewers and revised accordingly.

2) Please have English as native language to edit the entire manuscript.

3) Authors should make sure all the fonts and sizes are the same throughout the manuscript.

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.

Revision 3

All requirements have been addressed.

Also a native speaker has revised the language (Author name: Elmira Nosrati Sanjabad)

Attachments
Attachment
Submitted filename: Response to reviewers.docx
Decision Letter - Chien-Hsiang Weng, Editor

Global depression in Breast Cancer Patients: systematic review and meta-analysis

PONE-D-22-23966R3

Dear Dr. Ghashghaee,

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,

Chien-Hsiang Weng, M.D., M.P.H.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Formally Accepted
Acceptance Letter - Chien-Hsiang Weng, Editor

PONE-D-22-23966R3

Global Depression in Breast Cancer Patients: systematic review and meta-analysis

Dear Dr. Ghashghaee:

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

Professor Chien-Hsiang Weng

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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