Antimicrobial Resistance in Escherichia coli Isolated from Marine Sediment Samples from Kuwait Bay

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 2)

First, I want to thank the authors for their efforts in responding to my comments. I see that the authors have improved the “material and methods” and “conclusions” part. However, the contents of this manuscript do not present sufficiently novel information and scholarly depth to warrant publication. Please understand that consideration of novelty is needed to maintain journal standards.

 

Author Response

We are thankful for reviewers’ appreciation to our revised manuscript. We strongly disagree with the recommendation of the reviewer that this manuscript shouldn’t be published due to lack of novelty. We have stated quite explicitly that this dataset is unique and information is non-existent in the region. Most of the papers published in not only “Sustainability” but other main stream Elsevier and Springer Environmental Journals often are not always novel and if this is the opinion of the reviewer the publication profiles will be hardly 15 – 20% of the current publications. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report (Previous Reviewer 3)

Within the introduction section the authors must highlight the public health importance of E. coli consulting and citing MDPI articles (e.g. doi: 10.3390/antibiotics11060721 and doi: 10.3390/microorganisms10030496) in order to increase the journal reputation, and also, please describe the pathogenic potential of E. coli (e.g. classification of sub-pathotypes, enterohemorrhagic (e.g. eaeA), enterotoxigenic (e.g. elt, est), enteroinvazive (e.g. invE), enteroaggregative (e.g. Eagg, astA), and diffusely adherent (e.g. daaD)...)

Figure 2 legend: replace "sensitive percentage" with "susceptible percentage"

Materials and Methods - The authors must provide a short description of the selection strategy of the tested antimicrobials. The name of the antibiotics must written with lowercase!

Author Response

many thanks for your valuable comments 

please find the replies on your comments and the previous comments as an attachment. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report (Previous Reviewer 1)

I think that the suggested changes have been adequately considered. From my point of view the manuscript could be published.

Author Response

many thanks for your valuable support. 

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The present manuscript is an interesting study on antibiotic resistance of E. coli isolates in sediment samples from the Bay of Kuwait. The methodology is correct and the study is well conducted. There are some issues that need to be improved to publish the article:

1) The manuscript is not pleasant to read because of the citations. Citations contain too many author names. This fact should be reviewed.

2) ml is preferred with a capital letter mL.

3) Lines 139-140: Why do the authors use different volumes of each serial dilution? Was the sediment filtration easy? Obviously, filtration is not the best technique for analyzing materials with large amounts of suspended solids. Please explain this methodology and procedure better.

4) Table 1. Since the samples were in triplicate, the deviations (± SD) must be included in the table.

5) Why was the number of samples (n) so different across sites? With only 5 or 9 samples, can the results be considered significant? With this number of samples, can the abundance of resistances between sites be meaningfully compared?

6) Lines 210-213: Here, the meaning of the values of n is a bit confusing. It could generate confusion with the number of samples analyzed.

7) The references must be ordered alphabetically, or in the text of the manuscript put the number of the reference, not the authors. In addition, the name of the species must be italicized. The Bibliography should be revised and improved.

Reviewer 2 Report

I read with great attention the paper entitled " Antimicrobial resistance in E. coli isolated from marine sediment samples from Kuwait Bay" submitted by the authors in sustainability journal.

This study is very interesting especially since the whole world suffers now because the problem of multidrug resistant bacteria. A lack of effective antibiotic has been reported in some cases. This bacterial resistance is a very serious risk to human and animal health worldwide.

In this study, the authors presented the emergence of E. coli resistant to 3 different families of antibiotics (beta-lactam, Fluoroquinolones and cephalospiron) in the sediments of the Kuwait coast . The results presented in this study are interesting, but their interest remains local to Kuwait.

Globally, sediments have been known for decades as a reservoir of pollution, pathogenic bacteria and multidrug resistant bacteria. Therefore, the results presented in their current form do not present enough novelty for scientific researchers.

I recommend a few points to improve the research interest of this paper:

• The transfer risk multidrug resistant bacteria into seawater or beaches

• The risk associated with an operation in the seabed such as sediment dredging operation

• The risk of horizontal gene transfer

• The emergence risk of these multidrug resistant bacteria in marine fishing areas

The authors must give at the end of their study recommendations and advises in responding to that very real problem.

Moreover, “Materials and Methods” section must be more organized and structured. The authors must organize this section as follows:

·        Sampling sites or study area

·        Sample collection

·        Enumeration of E. coli

·        Antimicrobial susceptibility testing

The mean number of fecal bacteria and E. coli in sediment must be presented in colony-forming unities (CFU) per 100 g of sediment.

Reviewer 3 Report

 

Line 29: “(WHO 2022)” – the modality of citations are not in agreement with the journal requirement, must be [1]. Please use rectangular brackets and numbers. Please be carefully with this concern throughout the manuscript.

Lines 86-92: In this paragraph the authors must highlight the public health importance of E. coli consulting and citing MDPI articles (e.g. doi: 10.3390/antibiotics11060721 and doi: 10.3390/microorganisms10030496) in order to increase the journal reputation, and also, please describe the pathogenic potential of E. coli (e.g. classification of sub-pathotypes, enterohemorrhagic (e.g. eaeA), enterotoxigenic (e.g. elt, est), enteroinvazive (e.g. invE), enteroaggregative (e.g. Eagg, astA), and diffusely adherent (e.g. daaD)...)

Line 123: it is unclear how many sediment samples were collected, and how the authors can justify the total number of collected samples?

Lines 146 and 156: please insert a reference at the end of the paragraph

Line 159: being  non-European study, I wonder, why the authors used the EUCAST guideline instead of CLSI?

Line 169: please replace “sensitivity” with “susceptibility” and “sensitive” with “susceptible” throughout the manuscript

Line 174: please uniformly indicate throughout the manuscript the company, city and country name for all of the used reagents (e.g. Oxoid Ltd., Basingstoke, UK)

Line 177: the authors must provide a short description of the selection strategy of the tested antimicrobials. The name of the antibiotics must written with lowercase

Line 180: “[S ≥21, R< 21].The” – space delimitation

Line 182: were any strain intermediate resistance to the tested antimicrobials?

Line 202: “percent” instead of “%”

Line 204: “Frthe” – unclear

Line 223: “E. coli” – italics, please be carefully with this concern throughout the manuscript

Line 313: The authors must insert a separate conclusion chapter focusing only on the main conclusions, study limitations (e.g. evaluating the human infective potential of the isolates, screening the genotypic resistance of the isolates, etc.) and future perspectives in this research area.