Quantifying the effect of interpregnancy maternal weight and smoking status changes on childhood overweight and obesity in a UK population-based cohort

Elizabeth J. Taylor; Nida Ziauddeen; Ann Berrington; Keith M. Godfrey; Nisreen A. Alwan

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0311677

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionMarch 11, 2024
31 Jul 2024 Decision Letter - Engelbert Adamwaba Nonterah, Editor Transfer Alert This paper was transferred from another journal. As a result, its full editorial history (including decision letters, peer reviews and author responses) may not be present. PONE-D-24-08911Quantifying the effect of interpregnancy maternal weight and smoking status changes on childhood overweight and obesity in a UK population-based cohortPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Ziauddeen, 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. Please submit your revised manuscript by Sep 14 2024 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. 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The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf 2. We noted in your submission details that a portion of your manuscript may have been presented or published elsewhere. [This work was presented at the virtual Lancet Public Health Science conference in November 2021 and the submitted abstract was published (https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(21)02627-1). This work originally formed part of the thesis for a Doctor of Philosophy degree undertaken by Elizabeth Taylor and funded by NIHR Southampton Biomedical Research Centre and University of Southampton Primary Care, Population Sciences and Medical Education PhD studentship. The thesis is under embargo until October 2024.] Please clarify whether this [conference proceeding or publication] was peer-reviewed and formally published. If this work was previously peer-reviewed and published, in the cover letter please provide the reason that this work does not constitute dual publication and should be included in the current manuscript. 3. We note that you have indicated that there are restrictions to data sharing for this study. For studies involving human research participant data or other sensitive data, we encourage authors to share de-identified or anonymized data. However, when data cannot be publicly shared for ethical reasons, we allow authors to make their data sets available upon request. For information on unacceptable data access restrictions, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-unacceptable-data-access-restrictions. Before we proceed with your manuscript, please address the following prompts: a) If there are ethical or legal restrictions on sharing a de-identified data set, please explain them in detail (e.g., data contain potentially identifying or sensitive patient information, data are owned by a third-party organization, etc.) and who has imposed them (e.g., a Research Ethics Committee or Institutional Review Board, etc.). Please also provide contact information for a data access committee, ethics committee, or other institutional body to which data requests may be sent. b) If there are no restrictions, please upload the minimal anonymized data set necessary to replicate your study findings to a stable, public repository and provide us with the relevant URLs, DOIs, or accession numbers. Please see http://www.bmj.com/content/340/bmj.c181.long for guidelines on how to de-identify and prepare clinical data for publication. For a list of recommended repositories, please see https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/recommended-repositories. You also have the option of uploading the data as Supporting Information files, but we would recommend depositing data directly to a data repository if possible. Please update your Data Availability statement in the submission form accordingly 4. Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] 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 ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 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: No ****** 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 ****** 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: Reviewer’s comments Introduction � The introduction is clear and concise, but the literature cited is very global, none on the context where the study is conducted. Suggestion: include more contextual information including the problem and the gaps that the study addresses. Methods � Very well and clearly detailed. Results � Well detailed, aligned with the objectives and statistical analysis. However, quite difficult to follow, the author should add sub-topics representing the different sub-objectives / scenarios for clarity. Reviewer #2: An excellent paper. Well written, conceived and interesting. Results support the need for good pre- / inter-conception strategies to optimise maternal health and mitigate childhood risks. A few minor comments and suggests for the author(s): Methods: 1. What is your rationale for excluding women who conceived via artificial reproductive therapy? This should be more clearly described and discussed in the paper. With increasing maternal age, more women are seeking to conceive via ART. Often BMI restrictions in the private sector are less closely adhered to than in the NHS. It is important that full representation of the pregnant population is described. 2. Exposure assessment - please state that the chosen BMI classes reflect a truncated WHO classification (REF). Results: 1. Table 3: gestational age could be more meaningful to present as weeks and days depending on readership. It may be clearer to include both this in additional to gestational age in days. 2. Table 3: please check that units are clearly presented for all variables (e.g) weight change between pregnancies (%) in table 3. 3. Abbreviations 3 and 4 are not described in the footnotes for table 3, please amend. 4. What was your rationale for significant weight gain (3 kg or more)? Please describe why in the manuscript. Discussion: Well thought through and presented. Further discussion could include influence of recent maternity and public health strategies to support your proposed interventions. For example, the Women’s Health Strategy for England. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/womens-health-hubs-information-and-guidance/womens-health-hubs-core-specification ****** 6. 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 Kelly-Ann Eastwood ******** [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0311677.r001
Revision 1
20 Sep 2024 Author Response When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements. 1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf Thank you, we have updated the formatting to meet PLOS ONE’s requirements. 2. We noted in your submission details that a portion of your manuscript may have been presented or published elsewhere. [This work was presented at the virtual Lancet Public Health Science conference in November 2021 and the submitted abstract was published (https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(21)02627-1). This work originally formed part of the thesis for a Doctor of Philosophy degree undertaken by Elizabeth Taylor and funded by NIHR Southampton Biomedical Research Centre and University of Southampton Primary Care, Population Sciences and Medical Education PhD studentship. The thesis is under embargo until October 2024.] Please clarify whether this [conference proceeding or publication] was peer-reviewed and formally published. If this work was previously peer-reviewed and published, in the cover letter please provide the reason that this work does not constitute dual publication and should be included in the current manuscript. The abstract was reviewed by the conference organising committee for decision making on acceptance of abstract to the conference programme. The short abstract was published in a supplement of the Lancet which is the usual practice for this conference’s accepted abstracts every year. This does not constitute dual publication as the conference abstract does not include the full introduction, methods, results and discussion included in the paper. 3. We note that you have indicated that there are restrictions to data sharing for this study. For studies involving human research participant data or other sensitive data, we encourage authors to share de-identified or anonymized data. However, when data cannot be publicly shared for ethical reasons, we allow authors to make their data sets available upon request. For information on unacceptable data access restrictions, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-unacceptable-data-access-restrictions. Before we proceed with your manuscript, please address the following prompts: a) If there are ethical or legal restrictions on sharing a de-identified data set, please explain them in detail (e.g., data contain potentially identifying or sensitive patient information, data are owned by a third-party organization, etc.) and who has imposed them (e.g., a Research Ethics Committee or Institutional Review Board, etc.). Please also provide contact information for a data access committee, ethics committee, or other institutional body to which data requests may be sent. b) If there are no restrictions, please upload the minimal anonymized data set necessary to replicate your study findings to a stable, public repository and provide us with the relevant URLs, DOIs, or accession numbers. Please see http://www.bmj.com/content/340/bmj.c181.long for guidelines on how to de-identify and prepare clinical data for publication. For a list of recommended repositories, please see https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/recommended-repositories. You also have the option of uploading the data as Supporting Information files, but we would recommend depositing data directly to a data repository if possible. Please update your Data Availability statement in the submission form accordingly We have edited the data availability statement as follows: The study’s ethical approval from the Faculty of Medicine Ethics Committee, University of Southampton and the Health Research Authority restricts public sharing of the raw data used in this study. To request access conditional on approval from the appropriate institutional ethics, research governance processes and data owners, please email rgoinfo@soton.ac.uk. 4. Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice. Thank you, we have reviewed the reference list as suggested. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer #1: Introduction: The introduction is clear and concise, but the literature cited is very global, none on the context where the study is conducted. Suggestion: include more contextual information including the problem and the gaps that the study addresses. Thank you. Further detail has now been included in the introduction to address the reviewer’s comments (lines 50-54 and 58-63). These pick up on the specific prevalence of children with obesity in the UK and add more contextual detail. Methods: Very well and clearly detailed. Thank you. Results: Well detailed, aligned with the objectives and statistical analysis. However, quite difficult to follow, the author should add sub-topics representing the different sub-objectives / scenarios for clarity. Thank you, sub-headings have now been added to aid clarity. Reviewer #2: An excellent paper. Well written, conceived and interesting. Results support the need for good pre- / inter-conception strategies to optimise maternal health and mitigate childhood risks. Thank you. A few minor comments and suggests for the author(s): Methods: 1. What is your rationale for excluding women who conceived via artificial reproductive therapy? This should be more clearly described and discussed in the paper. With increasing maternal age, more women are seeking to conceive via ART. Often BMI restrictions in the private sector are less closely adhered to than in the NHS. It is important that full representation of the pregnant population is described. Thank you. Women who conceived one or both of their first two pregnancies using assisted reproductive technologies have been excluded to reduce any potential for residual confounding because of unmeasured health changes associated with this very heterogeneous group of interventions. Few exclusions were made for this reason (n = 309). The manuscript has been updated to be more specific for the reason for this exclusion (lines 100-102). 2. Exposure assessment - please state that the chosen BMI classes reflect a truncated WHO classification (REF). Thank you, this has now been included as suggested (lines 117-118). Results: 1. Table 3: gestational age could be more meaningful to present as weeks and days depending on readership. It may be clearer to include both this in additional to gestational age in days. Thank you. For clarity, a footnote has been added to the Table to state that 280 days is equivalent to 40 weeks gestation. 2. Table 3: please check that units are clearly presented for all variables (e.g) weight change between pregnancies (%) in table 3. Thank you, the second line of the table heading was omitted in error and has now been re-instated to show “All figures are proportions (%) unless stated otherwise.” 3. Abbreviations 3 and 4 are not described in the footnotes for table 3, please amend. Thank you, these have now been replaced with a description, to be consistent with the entries for the second child. The abbreviations in the table have also been updated. 4. What was your rationale for significant weight gain (3 kg or more)? Please describe why in the manuscript. Thank you. A brief description of the rationale with appropriate references has now been added to the manuscript (lines 291-293). Discussion: Well thought through and presented. Further discussion could include influence of recent maternity and public health strategies to support your proposed interventions. For example, the Women’s Health Strategy for England. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/womens-health-hubs-information-and-guidance/womens-health-hubs-core-specification Thank you very much. A brief reference to this has now been included in the paper in the context of delivering interventions (lines 317-319). Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response-to-reviewers-effect-IPchanges _final.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0311677.r002
24 Sep 2024 Decision Letter - Engelbert Adamwaba Nonterah, Editor Quantifying the effect of interpregnancy maternal weight and smoking status changes on childhood overweight and obesity in a UK population-based cohort PONE-D-24-08911R1 Dear Dr. Nida Ziauddeen, 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. An invoice will be generated when your article is formally accepted. Please note, if your institution has a publishing partnership with PLOS and your article meets the relevant criteria, all or part of your publication costs will be covered. Please make sure your user information is up-to-date by logging into Editorial Manager at Editorial Manager® and clicking the ‘Update My Information' link at the top of the page. If you have any questions relating to publication charges, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org. 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, Engelbert A. Nonterah, MD, PhD Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0311677.r003
Formally Accepted
27 Sep 2024 Acceptance Letter - Engelbert Adamwaba Nonterah, Editor PONE-D-24-08911R1 PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Ziauddeen, 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. At this stage, our production department will prepare your paper for publication. This includes ensuring the following: * All references, tables, and figures are properly cited * All relevant supporting information is included in the manuscript submission, * There are no issues that prevent the paper from being properly typeset If revisions are needed, the production department will contact you directly to resolve them. If no revisions are needed, you will receive an email when the publication date has been set. At this time, we do not offer pre-publication proofs to authors during production of the accepted work. Please keep in mind that we are working through a large volume of accepted articles, so please give us a few weeks to review your paper and let you know the next and final steps. Lastly, if your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. 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. If we can help with anything else, please email us at customercare@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Dr. Engelbert Adamwaba Nonterah Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0311677.r004

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