PONE-D-23-43762Novel advantages of 11C-L-methionine dynamic PET/CT for assessing the rate of skeletal muscle protein synthesis: A pilot trial in young Japanese menPLOS ONE

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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: Partly

Reviewer #2: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

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: Yes

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: The aim of the present manuscript is to evaluate the muscle protein synthesis (MPS) using dynamic 11C-methionine PET/CT in 6 healthy subjects. The study may be of interest to readers, even though the small sample size may reduce the reproducibility and the accuracy of these data.

Aside from a general improvement in the English language, the papers lacks a paragraph describing the limitations of the study, which I suggest including before considering it suitable for publication in PLOS.

Reviewer #2: Authors demonstrated dynamic PET/CT using 11C-radiolabeled L-methionine in order to assess the rate of skeletal muscle protein synthesis.

I really understand that authors’ PET studies are very important and unique from the viewpoint of medical trials for establishing non-invasive quantitative analysis of skeletal muscle protein synthesis in men. Authors’ research strategy using the radiotracer [11C]methionine can be apprecited as a suitable approach by medical scientist because methionine serves as the initiating amino acid in the process of protein synthesis.

However, from the general scientific view, I think that authors’ work is still in a preliminary stage and lack of scientific originality. Actually, authors did not obtain the result of significant increase in Ki after milk protein ingestion. There is less information about the quality control of the [11C]methionine injection solution such as purity, volume, and molar activity. Further, there are some concerns about the start-time of in vivo muscle protein synthesis and its time-scale of PET scan with [11C]methionine after milk protein ingestion.

Some other medical groups try to perform similar studies of some biological functions like in vivo protein synthesis using [11C]methionine which is a conventional radiotracer. If considered another possibility of the trial, parallel use of radioactive [11C]methionine and [11C]luecine might be encouraged for the assessment, the latter of which is an activator of the mammalian target of rapamycin in association with the protein synthesis.

From the comprehensive standpoint, I do not think that this article meets the journal quality and philosophy of PLOS ONE, which is a relative leading-edge journal. It might be better that this article would be summarized as a letter/communication style and submitted to more specific journals regarding PET clinical study.

P.S.

According to the IUPAC nomenclature, description of L-[11C]methionine is preferred to 11C-L-methionine.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Unique advantages of dynamic L-[11C]methionine PET/CT for assessing the rate of skeletal muscle protein synthesis: a pilot trial in young men

PONE-D-23-43762R1

Dear Dr. YAMAZAKI,

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,

Juan J Loor

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 #2: (No Response)

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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 #2: Yes

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

Reviewer #2: Yes

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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 #2: 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 #2: 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 #2: The revised manuscript is well-written.

I think that the revised manuscript meets the quality and criteria of PLOS ONE.

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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 #2: No

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