PONE-D-24-31772Associations between serum uric acid and depression in U.S. adults: an analysis of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2007–2016PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. ertao, 

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.

Comments: In general, the article is well written. Please add more discussions to reveal the association between gender disparities, serum uric acid level and depression.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Dec 20 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. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Lai Kuan Lee

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Additional Editor Comments:

The research article entitled "Associations between serum uric acid and depression in U.S. adults: an analysis of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2007–2016" is reviewed.

In general, the article is important and add literature to the existing pool.

More discussions are expected to reveal the connection between gender, serum uric acid and depression.

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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: 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: Hello. Thanks for opportunity to review this manuscript.

Your contribution to the already available research on this topic is to add that there is a gender difference in the relationship between uric acid and depression.

- Your citation of reference # 11 was only done on male adolescents. Please change the language you have used to seem to indicate the relationship does not exist in women when what you wanted to convey was that there was no data on women.

- In results, The paragraph starting with "As shown in Figure 1,..." could use a change in grammar and syntax to better explain the chart. (e.g- whether serum uric acid goes up or down, it increases the risk of depression in women"). The relationship between different tertiles and the depression incidence could be explained better as well. There is a typo of "Man" for "men" as well. There would be a better way of explaining the general relationship and the one when diabetes is involved separately.

- The same in the Discussion section- "Higher serum uric acid has a correlation with a higher risk of depression in American female population, but it's opposite in male". That's partially true but can be described in a better way.

- Next paragraph in Discussion has typo- Why is it surprising that men show lower prevalence of depression with higher level of serum uric acid (isn't that what previous data has shown?) -- also "it's similar to our found" is a typo.

- The conclusion might also need to be rewritten with correction of typos ("uric acid is independent risk factors", "people with diabetes also increase the risk of depression..."). Also, adding diabetes as a risk factor for depression seems unrelated to your study about uric acid. If it is not, please explain it.

- Then in Discussion you mention other studies that show results opposite or not in keeping with your results which brings up a big question about the veracity and reproducibility of these results. There are many confounding factors that can lead to uric acid increase over the ones related to depression and I think the connection between the two especailly in a cross sectional data does not explain much. Please discuss other confounders in discussion. What other factors can determine uric acid levels? What other biochemical reactions cause uric acid to be formed other than purines?

Reviewer #2: abstract keywords ; should we put?..... oxidative stress; diabetes

Introduction: 6-7th line and 16-17th: repeated "serum uric acid contributes

to approximately 60% of the antioxidant capacity in body's blood"

Methods and material:

Study design and subjects: last line: do 20804 participants have data on uric acid and depression? as per the statement

Result: 3rd line- rephrase....

symptoms and illness are different. It is better to mention only : Depression

Was 19826 Participants score of PHQ less than 5?

minor grammatical issues: highlighted pink

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: PONE-D-24-31772_reviewer.pdf

PONE-D-24-31772R1Associations between serum uric acid and depression in U.S. adults: an analysis of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2007–2016PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. li,

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.

==============================

The manuscript entitled "Associations between serum uric acid and depression in U.S. adults: an analysis of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2007–2016" is reviewed again.

Few comments:

- The language and grammar mistakes in the manuscript require further polishing.

Eg: The study show that 

       it as the independent 

- Table 2 is being presented in a not readable format.

- Please revise the authors' contributions. 

-Ethical approval: Was the publication consent granted? Please list the human ethical approval serial number/reference code.

- Add limitation and strengths

==============================

Please submit your revised manuscript by Feb 13 2025 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. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

• A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
• A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
• An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Lai Kuan Lee

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

The manuscript entitled "Associations between serum uric acid and depression in U.S. adults: an analysis of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2007–2016" is reviewed again.

Few comments:

- The language and grammar mistakes in the manuscript require further polishing.

Eg: The study show that

it as the independent

- Table 2 is being presented in a not readable format.

- Please revise the authors' contributions.

-Ethical approval: Was the publication consent granted? Please list the human ethical approval serial number/reference code.

- Add limitation and strengths

[Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.]

[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.

PONE-D-24-31772R2Associations between serum uric acid and depression in U.S. adults: an analysis of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2007–2016PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. li,

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.

Dear authors,The revised manuscript is thoroughly checked. Some comments: - The language and grammar mistakes in the manuscript still exist. You are advised to check every single information in the text, including the reference list. Example: Line 20, Line 27-28, Line 200, Line 203 - Please provide ethical approval reference number. - Provide descriptive footnote for every tables. - Arrange Table 2 and Table 3 in landscape mode. - Line 220: Write a meaningful acknowledgement - Add clear objectives, hypothesis

Please submit your revised manuscript by Mar 22 2025 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. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

• A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
• A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
• An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Lai Kuan Lee

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments:

Dear authors,

The revised manuscript is thoroughly checked.

Some comments:

- The language and grammar mistakes in the manuscript still exist. You are advised to check every single information in the text, including the reference list.

Example: Line 20, Line 27-28, Line 200, Line 203

- Please provide ethical approval reference number.

- Provide descriptive footnote for every tables.

- Arrange Table 2 and Table 3 in landscape mode.

- Line 220: Write a meaningful acknowledgement

- Add clear objectives, hypothesis

[Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.]

[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.

Associations between serum uric acid and depression in U.S. adults: an analysis of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2007–2016

PONE-D-24-31772R3

Dear Dr. Jie Li,

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,

Lai Kuan Lee

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments: