PONE-D-23-34502Plasma and breast milk adipokines in women across the first year postpartum and their association with maternal depressive symptoms and infant neurodevelopment: protocol for the APPLE prospective cohort studyPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Rebelo,

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PLOS ONE

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Additional Editor Comments:

1. Please provide a valid rationale for the proposed study by clearly identify and justify research questions

2. Descriptions of methods and materials in the protocol should be reported in sufficient detail

3. Discussion should be more elaborated, including implication to clinical practice

4. Please pay more attention to manuscript writing guidelines and grammar

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Does the manuscript provide a valid rationale for the proposed study, with clearly identified and justified research questions?

The research question outlined is expected to address a valid academic problem or topic and contribute to the base of knowledge in the field.

Reviewer #1: Partly

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2. Is the protocol technically sound and planned in a manner that will lead to a meaningful outcome and allow testing the stated hypotheses?

The manuscript should describe the methods in sufficient detail to prevent undisclosed flexibility in the experimental procedure or analysis pipeline, including sufficient outcome-neutral conditions (e.g. necessary controls, absence of floor or ceiling effects) to test the proposed hypotheses and a statistical power analysis where applicable. As there may be aspects of the methodology and analysis which can only be refined once the work is undertaken, authors should outline potential assumptions and explicitly describe what aspects of the proposed analyses, if any, are exploratory.

Reviewer #1: Partly

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3. Is the methodology feasible and described in sufficient detail to allow the work to be replicable?

Descriptions of methods and materials in the protocol should be reported in sufficient detail for another researcher to reproduce all experiments and analyses. The protocol should describe the appropriate controls, sample size calculations, and replication needed to ensure that the data are robust and reproducible.

Reviewer #1: Yes

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4. Have the authors described where all data underlying the findings will be made available when the study is complete?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception, at the time of publication. 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

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5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

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Reviewer #1: Yes

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6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above and, if applicable, provide comments about issues authors must address before this protocol can be accepted for publication. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about research or publication ethics.

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(Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: Comments

Line 164 , Line 77, Line 358, Line 366, Line 373. the term 'waves' could be omitted.

Line 374, the language version of Nova24h and Line 419, the amount of reimbursement is to be stated.

Line 426-427, the information provided is unclear. More information is to be provided e.g at which time point measurement and the values. In reference 53, 13.6 is referring to the age interval (months) 6.

Line -430, E= difference considered significant, δ=SD, Zα/2 =1.96 is to be denoted.

Line 430, the sample size formula presentation n=[Zα/2.δ/E]²) requires revision

Line 440, proper citation for STATA software is to be provided.

Line 447-448, the type of adipokines e.g. adiponectin and leptin are to be stated.

Preliminary results are to be omitted as the focus of the paper is describing the methodology. If the authors believe the preliminary results are important, the author may consider including them as supplementary files if allowable by the journal.

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Reviewer #1: No

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Plasma and breast milk adipokines in women across the first year postpartum and their association with maternal depressive symptoms and infant neurodevelopment: protocol for the APPLE prospective cohort study

PONE-D-23-34502R1

Dear Dr. Rebelo,

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.

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Kind regards,

Annisa Dewi Nugrahani

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments: