-->PONE-D-25-58602-->-->Oral and rectal colonization of Gram-negative resistant bacteria and Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureusresidents in one long-term care facility and changes in professional oral hygiene care: Cross-sectional and interventional Study-->-->PLOS One

Dear Dr. Haruta,

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 Feb 09 2026 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,

Gabriel Trueba, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS One

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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

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https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf

2. Thank you for stating the following financial disclosure:

This study was supported by the Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare Japan (program Grant No. JPMH19HA1004 and JPMH22HA1002)(OH), MEXT Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C) (Grant No. 20K10248)(MY), and the Research Program on Emerging and Re-emerging Infectious Diseases from the Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development under Grant No. 21fk0108604j0001 and JP22fk0108604j0002(MS).

Please state what role the funders took in the study. If the funders had no role, please state: "The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript."

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The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.

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4. If the reviewer comments include a recommendation to cite specific previously published works, please review and evaluate these publications to determine whether they are relevant and should be cited. There is no requirement to cite these works unless the editor has indicated otherwise.

5. 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.

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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: The authors described the oral and rectal colonization of antimicrobial resistant gram-negative bacteria and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus in residents of one long-term care facility and explore the effect of short-term professional oral management in controlling the colonizing resistant bacteria.

The article is well-written, and application of materials and methods are appropriate for this study.

This reviewer noticed the following points to be clarified.

1. Check the accuracy of the title.

2. Table 2 and Table 3, detection of CTX-M genes are group specific or specific CTX-M types?

Detection by PCR might be CTX-M- group specific, so that CTX-M1, CTX-M2, and CTX-M9 should be rephrased as CTX-M-group-1, CTX-M-group-2, and CTX-M-group-9 respectively.

Without sequencing of CTX-M gene covering the whole ORF, the specific CTX-M- type could not be assigned.

3. Table S1, references of primers are not listed in reference section. These references should be described in foot note of Table S1.

Reviewer #2: Greetings,

Very good work. Kindly consider the following points:

1- In this manuscript, the pronoun “we” has been used frequently (67 times). In scientific writing, it is preferable to avoid personal pronouns. Please replace them with formal expressions such as “this study,” “the present study,” or “the current study.”

2- Please add a clear Conclusion section following the Discussion section.

3- It is recommended to include a list of abbreviations at the end of the manuscript for better readability.

4- Several references are outdated. Kindly update the reference list by citing more recent studies published from 2018 onward.

Kind regards.

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-->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: No

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To ensure your figures meet our technical requirements, please review our figure guidelines: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/figures

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NAAS will assess whether your figures meet our technical requirements by comparing each figure against our figure specifications.

-->

Oral and rectal colonization of Gram-negative antimicrobial-resistant bacteria and Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus in one long-term care facility and changes in professional oral hygiene care: Cross-sectional and interventional study

PONE-D-25-58602R1

Dear Dr. Haruta,

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. For questions related to billing, please contact billing support .

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,

Gabriel Trueba, PhD

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 #1: All comments have been addressed

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: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

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

Reviewer #1: N/A

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: The authors made changes according to the prior comments which has improved the clarity of the article.

No comments from this reviewer.

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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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: No

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