PONE-D-23-33103Diarrheagenic Escherichia coli are isolated primarily from children under five years of age with diarrhea in low-income areas of Mexico: Supplementary virulence genes (SVG) and antimicrobial resistance.PLOS ONE

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Reviewer #1: Partly

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: I Don't Know

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: Diarrheagenic Escherichia coli are isolated primarily from children under five years of

age with diarrhea in low-income areas of Mexico: Supplementary virulence genes

(SVG) and antimicrobial resistance.

Gabriela Tapia-Pastrana et al.

Lines 48-52. Can you include any statistics on childhood morbidity/mortality due to diarrhea?

Lines 51-52. List a few of the major causes of childhood diarrhea, globally. Also, please add a reference for this statement.

Line 57. Make sure eaeA+ is italicized.

Line 58. Re-write this sentence to state: In the absence of the EAF plasmid, EPEC are classified as atypical EPEC (aEPEC).

Line 60. Re-write to state: Enteroinvasive E. coli (EIEC) strains encode transcription activators and a type three secretion system (T3SS).

Line 62 and 63. Replace “have” with “encode”.

Paragraphs 2 and 3 need to be made more concise. As they are written now, they sound like a review paper. Please try to find a way to reduce the text. Maybe a table showing the pathotypes and associated genes would help. Im sure that there are many examples of this in the literature.

Lines 81 – 84. Need references for these statements.

Line 91. Put all of the references at the end of the sentence.

Line 94. Remove “our work team” and re-write the sentence to cite the study without mentioning the group.

Line 97. Do not start the sentence with “On the other hand,” this is too casual. Also, many readers will not know where Oaxaca is. How does the poverty level influence DEC prevalence. As statement like this should be reserved for the Discussion and should have a citation.

Lines 109 to 111. Please add a citation for this statement.

Line 140. You mention that “the most representative amplicons were sequenced for control purposes.” How was this done? Also please list the PCR reaction conditions or state where they can be found.

Line 188. Where can we find the breakpoints? How were bacteria determined to be “intermediate resistant”? What diameter was used to identify this?

Line 233. Could you include a supplementary table showing the patient-by-patient or isolate-by-isolate PCR results?

Line 226 What is tEPEC? Please define this earlier in the manuscript.

Figure 2 caption. Please do not include the methods in the caption, at least not to this much detail.

For P-values throughout the text, please use “<” or “>” instead of “:”

Line numbers disappear at the beginning of the Discussion section.

In the sentence “In this study, 63% of children with diarrhea from different municipalities of Oaxaca were DEC positive…” please change to “In this study, 63% of the samples collected from children with diarrhea from different municipalities of Oaxaca were DEC positive …”

You need a reference for this statement: “Diarrhea is common in Mexican children; however, many microorganisms can cause diarrhea.” Also, how does this lead to the next statement, “Therefore, the prevalence of DEC in Mexico may vary by region”? How are these two statements connected?

Do not use First and Middle initials in the in-text references.

The Discussion needs to be re-written so that it is not just a rehash of the results.

There should be some discussion of the potential sources of these infections. Have DEC-like bacteria been found in animals, foods, water in Oaxaca?

The manuscript needs English-language editing, specifically with respect to word-choice.

Reviewer #2: 1-concern the title:

line 1-3, the title is not the representative and redundant title. the title must be self explanatory and it is prefer to be: Virulence genes, antimicrobial resistance profile, phylotyping and pathotyping of Diarrheagenic Escherichia coli isolated from children in southwest Mexico

2-Concern the abstract :

line 28, etiological factors: it is best to etiology

line 29, word contain: it is best to be, have

line 37, concern the of aEPEC, EAEC, DAEC, tEPEC, ETEC, EIEC, or EHEC,: pls. mention the percentage for each and also for co-infection.

line 39-40, authors mentioned that, SVG related to colonization (nleB), cytotoxicity (sat and espC),

and proteolysis (pic) were associated with DEC strains: who can you approve the association?

line 40-41, authors sated that, whereas espC, sat, and pic were associated with E. coli pathotypes: it is not clear and confused

line 42, the authors mentioned some strains as XDR, XDR strains mean that, it is resist at least one antibiotic from each class for at least all classes (mentioned in CLSI) except 2 but unfortunately the authors not used all classes of antibiotics as mentioned in CLSI so cannot regard its as XDR

finally the authors study the phylogroups of E. coli but in abstract nothing were mentioned concern the phylogroups of DEC

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes: Prof. Dr. Hussein O.M. Al-Dahmoshi

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: PONE-D-23-33103_reviewer highlighted.pdf

Virulence genes, antimicrobial resistance profile, phylotyping and pathotyping of Diarrheagenic Escherichia coli isolated from children in Southwest Mexico.

PONE-D-23-33103R1

Dear Dr. Gabriela,

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Kind regards,

Md Bashir Uddin, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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