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Peer-Review Record

Relationship between Duffy Genotype/Phenotype and Prevalence of Plasmodium vivax Infection: A Systematic Review

Trop. Med. Infect. Dis. 2023, 8(10), 463; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/tropicalmed8100463

by Yelson Alejandro Picón-Jaimes^1,†

, Ivan David Lozada-Martinez^2,†, Javier Esteban Orozco-Chinome³, Jessica Molina-Franky^4,5

, Domenica Acevedo-Lopez⁶

, Nicole Acevedo-Lopez³, Maria Paz Bolaño-Romero³, Fabriccio J. Visconti-Lopez⁷

, D. Katterine Bonilla-Aldana^8,*

and Alfonso J. Rodriguez-Morales^9,10

Reviewer 1:

Mehdi Nateghpour

Reviewer 2: Anonymous

Trop. Med. Infect. Dis. 2023, 8(10), 463; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/tropicalmed8100463

Submission received: 24 July 2023 / Revised: 7 September 2023 / Accepted: 13 September 2023 / Published: 30 September 2023

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Molecular Diagnosis of Malaria)

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for your informative systematic review. Some authors believe that those individuals that genetically are duffy blood negative they do not get vivex malaria. But some others do not believe such phenomenon. Authors of the manuscript have tried to gather the different relevant studies as much as possible in a systematic review. The topic is relevant in the field. It reviewing most of the relevant published materials. Compared with other published material, the systematic review methodologies are almost the same. Although your review indicates that Duffy negative genotype does not confer protection against vivax malaria, more studies are needed to confirm your conclusion.

Author Response

Comments to Reviewer 1

Thank you for your informative systematic review. Some authors believe that those individuals that genetically are Duffy blood negative they do not get vivax malaria. But some others do not believe such phenomenon. Authors of the manuscript have tried to gather the different relevant studies as much as possible in a systematic review. The topic is relevant in the field. It reviewing most of the relevant published materials. Compared with other published material, the systematic review methodologies are almost the same. Although your review indicates that Duffy negative genotype does not confer protection against vivax malaria, more studies are needed to confirm your conclusion.

Answer: Thanks a lot for your positive comments.

Reviewer 2 Report

This is a review on the relationship between Duffy genotype/phenotype and P. vivax infection, in particular on the question whether Duffy-negative persons are naturally protected from P. vivax infection. After the selection process, 34 published articles were analyzed.

Introduction: The introductory section provides sufficient background information.

Methods: The authors say that they followed the standard methodological procedures for systematic reviews, including registration (PROSPERO), PRISMA, STROBE, and GRADE tools. Few details concerning article selection should be checked for further clarity. The screening procedure (Fig. 1) needs more explanations. Please add a legend to this figure.

Results: There is a lot of redundancy. The purpose of a review paper is not to provide a detailed description of each of 34 selected papers. I think that the authors should focus on the pertinent data in the selected papers and give a synthetic view of all 34 papers. Please see my “major comments.”

Results: There is a lot of redundancy.

Discussion: At least 3 paragraphs in the Discussion section are not pertinent to this review paper. Please see my “major comments.”

Please italicize all Latin names (example, P. vivax).

MAJOR COMMENTS:

Results and Organization of the paper: The authors describe their results, article by article, in sections 3.3 and 3.4, as well as in Table 1. The text in sections 3.3 and 3.4 summarizes in detail the results obtained in each of 34 articles. In fact, each of 34 articles is described three times: once in section 3.3, second time in section 3.4, and the third time in the table. In short, there is a lot of redundancy in this paper. The authors should considerably shorten the text in sections 3.3 and 3.4, combine them to avoid repeating the description of each study in each section, and provide the essential results of each study in the table.

Discussion: The authors digress into irrelevant factors in lines 488-530 (sex, age, ethnic origin, bed net use). The text in these lines does not concern the topic of this review paper: Duffy vs P. vivax. These lines can be deleted.

Line 600-601, Conclusions: Unlike G6PD, Duffy is not an X-linked condition. There seems to be no reason why a review paper should look for a gender-associated correlation between Duffy and P. vivax infection.

Line 603-604, Conclusions, “negative Duffy genotype does not confer protection against this disease”: The statement is not clear, especially what “this disease” is referring to: malaria in general or P. vivax malaria? If referring to P. falciparum, P. ovale, or P. malariae, the information is not new. If referring to P. vivax alone, the conclusion of this review paper is somewhat disappointing because we all know, since more than a decade, that Duffy-negative individuals can be infected with P. vivax.

MINOR COMMENTS:

Lines 53-54: CDC does not maintain the database on global malaria cases. The data cited by the authors come from the WHO. Please cite the appropriate sources (World Malaria Report 2022) for reference 2.

Lines 54-55, “United States”: “United States of America”

Lines 54-57: The authors are talking about imported malaria in the United States of America, but cite a reference that pertains to imported malaria in Europe (ref 3). Please cite an appropriate reference to support the statement.

Line 58, “Plasmodium”: in italics

Line 59, “leading to potentially fatal alterations”: This expression is not clear. Please rewrite it.

Lines 59-60, “The invasion occurs when infected female Anopheles mosquitoes bite humans”: Not “invasion” but “infection”

Lines 59-60, Anopheles: in italics

Line 61, “can cause pathology in humans”: This is not always true with some Plasmodium species. An infected person can remain an asymptomatic carrier for years without any obvious pathology.

Line 66, IL-8: interleukin-8 (IL-8)

Line 65: It would be helpful to remind some readers who may not be familiar with the classification of chemokines that they are one of the subgroups of cytokines and that they are classified based on the number and arrangement of cysteine: 4 cysteine group (CC motif, CXC motif, CX3C motif with 3 amino acids between cysteine residues; 2 cysteine group (XC chemokines, etc.

Line 70, “the interaction with DARC is essential for the invasion of Plasmodium vivax”: The interaction with DARC is thought to be essential for the invasion of Plasmodium vivax (in italics)…the absence of this protein has been thought to be a preventive factor…

Line 76, “infestation”: parasite infection

Line 77, “data…exists”: exist

Line 78, “to achieve the WHO’s goal”: The authors refer to WHO but cite CDC (ref 8). Please cite a WHO document here to be coherent.

Line 80 and elsewhere in the text, “P. vivax infestation”: infection

Line 81, “more than 1/3 of the global population is exposed to it [P. vivax]”: Ref 9 is not the most appropriate citation here. Please cite a paper on the epidemiology of P. vivax malaria here.

Line 83, “Duffy antigen is essential for entering this Plasmodium species…”: is essential for invasion of P. vivax parasites into reticulocytes

Lines 81-84, “cases of P. vivax in Duffy-negative”: Ref 10 does not seem to support this statement. Please check.

Lines 101-103 versus line 114: The authors state in lines 101-103 that “filters were applied to select case reports,…” and state in line 114 that “full-text articles were considered.” These two statements sound contradictory. Please clarify.

Figure 1: At the first step of the screening procedure, it is not clear how the authors got 2438 (screened) – 2035 (excluded) = 443 (sought for retrieval). 2438-2035 = 403. A figure caption/legend should be added to explain what the double asterisks (**) refer to. The reasons for “Reports not retrieved (n = 370)” should be given. For “Reports excluded: no full-texts (n = 39)” further explanations should be provided. Is it because access to the articles is not free? Any other reasons why they were excluded?

Table 1: The authors refer to Table 1 in line 145. Table 1 is placed in line 289. It should be placed before Figure 2 for easier reference for the readers.

Line 181, “mixed P. vivax/P infections. falciparum in 33 samples”: P. vivax/P. falciparum mixed infections

Line 244, “In Namibia..”: I would start a new paragraph here.

Line 265, “another study conducted in the borders between Thailand, Myanmar, and Malaysia”: It is not clear in which country this study was conducted. Please specify the country. Also, I would start a new paragraph here to separate it from the preceding paragraph on India.

Lines 150-152, “Ghana”: In section 3.3, the authors describe, country by country, continent by continent, the essential findings of 34 studies included in this review paper. Why is the study performed in Ghana described so succinctly, in only 2 lines, whereas most other studies received more attention, usually with several lines or even one whole paragraph? I think that the text needs to be balanced. In any case, please refer to my “major comments” concerning redundancy.

Line 370, Dschang: There is a need for a transition. Lines 367-370 concern Nigeria. From line 370, the authors are talking about Cameroon.

Lines 539-541, “Additional studies by Hoque et al. and Keple et al. demonstrated a higher prevalence of P. vivax malaria in Duffy-negative subjects, with rates of 16.7% and 14%, respectively”: Please complete this sentence. What were the prevalence rates of P. vivax in Duffy-positive subjects in these two studies?

Line 574, “Arabia”: Saudi Arabia or Arabian peninsula?

Lines 602-603, “associated with a higher incidence of Plasmodium infection”: Plasmodium species in general or P. vivax?

Author Response

Comments to Reviewer 2

-Introduction: The introductory section provides sufficient background information.

Answer: We thank the peer reviewer for their comment with the aim of improving the quality of our manuscript. We have improved our introduction.

-Methods: The authors say that they followed the standard methodological procedures for systematic reviews, including registration (PROSPERO), PRISMA, STROBE, and GRADE tools. Few details concerning article selection should be checked for further clarity. The screening procedure (Fig. 1) needs more explanations. Please add a legend to this figure.