PONE-D-23-25250Longitudinal and regional association between dietary factors and prevalence of Crohn’s disease in JapanPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Kodama,

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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Peivand Bastani

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

Reviewer #2: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: I Don't Know

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: No

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: Dear authors,

Your study is a valuable research with an interesting topic that aims to investigate the longitudinal and regional association between dietary factors and prevalence of Crohn’s disease in Japan. To improve the study, it is better to consider the following comments:

1- Make the introduction shorter.

2- Mention a statistic of Crohn's disease in Japan in the introduction.

3- The design of study is not mentioned.

4- Write about the ecological fallacy of your research in the limitation section.

5- I did not see the regression table in the results.

6- The effect measure for correlations should be written in the results.

7- please provide ethical code of your research in Method section.

Reviewer #2: General comment:

The topic approached by authors of this paper is interesting and overall, I believe the study has relevant information hereby suitable for publication after revision.

The authors clearly explained their work throughout the manuscript. I just have some remarks/suggestions to point out.

The study found a correlation between increased meat consumption and CD prevalence in Japan, as well as reduced intake of fruits and vegetables. Moreover, it found a peak in meat consumption between the ages of 15-19 years old for both males and females in Japan, as well as a decrease in the consumption of fruits and vegetables in individuals aged between 20-30 and 20 years, respectively.

Specific comments:

In Abstract:

- The results should be reported in a statistical and accurate manner. (for example: increase in meat consumption: which percent or value? The P-value?)

In Methods:

- Meat consumption: the author mean just red meat or is poultry meat included?

In Results & Discussion:

- Fig 3: The units in the horizontal and vertical axes are not specified. Therefore, this figure cannot be understood on its own.

- The study relied on self-reported data, which may be subject to recall bias and other inaccuracies.

- The study did not take into account other potential environmental factors such as smoking, air pollution, and other lifestyle factors.

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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

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: review plose one.docx

Attachment

Submitted filename: revision.pdf

Longitudinal and regional association between dietary factors and prevalence of Crohn’s disease in Japan

PONE-D-23-25250R1

Dear Dr. Kodama,

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,

Peivand Bastani

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

Reviewer #3: 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: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: I Don't Know

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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: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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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: Yes

Reviewer #3: 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: Dear authors,

First, I thank you for the answers you gave to the reviewers, but I need to say some points:

1- The correlation index between two quantitative variables is r, and if the relationship between the two variables is inverse, the r becomes negative, but what you reported is beta. Please check again.

2- Every research project is approved in the relevant university and gets a code. Have you approved your project in the university?

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed. In my opinion, there are no scientific problems with the article. It can be printed.

Reviewer #3: (No Response)

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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: No

Reviewer #3: No

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