Peer Review History

Original SubmissionJune 5, 2024
Decision Letter - Preeti Kanawjia, Editor

PONE-D-24-20543Acquired hypothyroidism, iodine status and hearing impairment in adults: a pilot study.PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Grimmichova,

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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Kind regards,

Preeti Kanawjia, MD

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: No

Reviewer #2: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: No

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: Study is underpowered with only 30 cases/ controls and cannot answer the research question that hypothyroid patients are more prone to hearing loss than euthyroid controls ( given the anticipated effect size and precision of measurement).

The introduction and discussion are excessively detailed. The results section similarly has extensive information not relevant to the research question.

Reviewer #2: The manuscript “Acquired hypothyroidism, iodine status and hearing impairment in adults: a pilot study investigate the rate of hearing impairment in acquired hypothyroid patients. Manuscript designed well and consider for publication. However there are few corrections, which need to incorporate in manuscript.

1. Page 6, line no. 148, explain the criteria for selection of controls and mention that Hearing acuity test was performed in control group or not.

2. Page number 7, line number 159, 160 and 161, the authors have mentioned that Overt primary hypothyroidism is defined as thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) concentrations above the reference range and free thyroxine (T4) concentrations below the reference range. The diagnosis of overt hypothyroidism was confirmed by a second blood sample. The authors need to mention reference range and diagnosis criteria with appropriate use of reference.

3. Page 8, line no. 189, mention the name of statistical software used for data analysis.

4. Line no. 146-147, Hearing tests were done at the Department of Otorhinolaryngology of the University Hospital Kralovske Vinohrady in Prague. The hearing examination was conducted by trained audiologist or not?

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes:  Dr. PAWAN KUMAR KARE

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Attachments
Attachment
Submitted filename: Review Comments.docx
Revision 1

Response to Reviewers

First of all, we would like to thank the reviewers for reading and making the comments to our work. We appreciate it very much.

Reviewers' comments #1: Study is underpowered with only 30 cases/ controls and cannot answer the research question that hypothyroid patients are more prone to hearing loss than euthyroid controls ( given the anticipated effect size and precision of measurement).

Response to Reviewer #1: We did the power analysis. The effect size for discrimination between groups for significance level p<0.05 and power=0.8 was estimated using Mann Whitney test. In our data we were able to differentiate between the groups with effect size 0.385 (to find a moderate effect). We added to our statistics.

Reviewers' comments #1: The introduction and discussion are excessively detailed. The results section similarly has extensive information not relevant to the research question.

Response to Reviewer #1: We removed some of the excessively detailed parts from the introduction, results and discussion. You are right, we were too excited about too many details. However, we wanted to show the topic of hearing impairment and hypothyroidism comprehensively. There are too many unknown gaps.

Reviewers' comments #2:

Page 6, line no. 148, explain the criteria for selection of controls and mention whether the hearing acuity test was performed in the control group or not.

Response to Reviewer #2: We explained it in more detail and hope to make it clearer (marked).

Reviewers' comments #2: Page number 7, line number 159, 160 and 161, the authors have mentioned that Overt primary hypothyroidism is defined as thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) concentrations above the reference range and free thyroxine (T4) concentrations below the reference range. The diagnosis of overt hypothyroidism was confirmed by a second blood sample. The authors need to mention reference range and diagnosis criteria with appropriate use of reference.

Response to Reviewer #2: The reference ranges of our lab are mentioned below (marked), we used the appropriate reference.

Reviewers' comments #2: Page 8, line no. 189, mention the name of statistical software used for data analysis.

Response to Reviewer #2: We added all the softwares.

Reviewers' comments #2: Line no. 146-147, Hearing tests were done at the Department of Otorhinolaryngology of the University Hospital Kralovske Vinohrady in Prague. The hearing examination was conducted by trained audiologist or not?

Response to Reviewer #2: Yes, by a trained audiologist (marked). ________________________________________

Attachments
Attachment
Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx
Decision Letter - Preeti Kanawjia, Editor

<p>Acquired hypothyroidism, iodine status and hearing impairment in adults: a pilot study.

PONE-D-24-20543R1

Dear Dr. Grimmichova,

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,

Preeti Kanawjia, MD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments : "I have considered all reviewer comments and feel that the authors have provided sufficient explanation to support an Accept decision despite the alternative recommendation from a reviewer.")

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

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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: No

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

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

Reviewer #1: I Don't Know

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: Yes

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: Yes

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: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: The manuscript “Acquired hypothyroidism, iodine status and hearing impairment in adults: a pilot study" investigate the rate of hearing impairment in acquired hypothyroid patients. Manuscript designed well and consider for publication. The authors responded appropriately and incorporated all the information in the revised manuscript.

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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: Yes:  Dr. PAWAN KUMAR KARE

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Attachments
Attachment
Submitted filename: manuscript comments-1.docx
Formally Accepted
Acceptance Letter - Preeti Kanawjia, Editor

PONE-D-24-20543R1

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Grimmichova,

I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now being handed over to our production team.

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PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff

on behalf of

Dr. Preeti Kanawjia

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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