PONE-D-20-28178

Undiagnosed Hypertension and Associated Factors Among Bank Workers in Bahir Dar City, Northwest, Ethiopia, 2020. A Cross-Sectional Study.

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Kerie,

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.

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

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Yvonne Commodore-Mensah

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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3. Please include additional information regarding the survey or questionnaire used in the study and ensure that you have provided sufficient details that others could replicate the analyses. For instance, if you developed a questionnaire as part of this study and it is not under a copyright more restrictive than CC-BY, please include a copy, in both the original language and English, as Supporting Information.  If the original language is written in non-Latin characters, for example Amharic, Chinese, or Korean, please use a file format that ensures these characters are visible.

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'Funding

This study was supported by Amhara Regional Health Bureau.'

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Additional Editor Comments:

The article would benefit from a thorough editorial review for grammatical errors in order to improve the quality of the manuscript.

Abstract

• Specify that study was conducted in Ethiopia

• Specify the statistical approach that was used for the analysis in the last sentence of the methods section

• What percentage of participants had diagnosed hypertension?

• Round up the adjusted odds ratios and confidence intervals to 2 decimal places.

Introduction

• Page 4, line 75, revise sentence from “In the year of 2007” to “In 2007”

• Line 90 and 89 are redundant. Both sentences can be combined to make the point more concise

The study participants

• Change the subheading to Participants

• Provide range or approximate number of bank workers to provide sufficient information on the source population.

Sample size and procedure

• The formula for the sample size calculation is not needed in this section. Table 1 is also not necessary.

• Reference should be provided for WHO classification

Measurement

• The first sentence should be revised and the correct description should be used to describe the American Heart Association Hypertension Clinical Guidelines. A citation should be provided after the first sentence.

• The last sentence is unclear. What guideline is being referred to in this context?

Data quality control

• This section can be integrated into the other sections and shortened.

• There is a typo in line 183 “questioner”

Statistical Analysis

• Add description

Results

• Line 222: add a description of chat for readers who are not familiar with that terminology

• There are several grammatical errors that need to be corrected.

• In Table 3, the number of drinks should be presented separately for men and women because of the differences in recommendation.

• Add footnote should be added to Table 3 to provide a description of all the abbreviations used in Table 3.

• All Odds Ratios and 95%CIs should be reported to two decimal places.

• The proportion of participants who had normal blood pressure, elevated blood pressure, stage 1 and stage 2 hypertension are not reported.

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

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: 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

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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: No

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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: 1. Introduction

On the introduction, the reason for choosing bank workers from the general population for the study should be emphasized.

2. Materials and Methods

Sample size and procedure

On the study design and period section, the authors have mentioned that there are 2 government and 16 private banks in Bahir Dar, how many branches were included in the study? What was your selection criteria?

The authors use P value from a study conducted in the general population in Gulelle sub-city of Addis Ababa while your study was focused on a specific segment of the population. How do you explain this?

Measurement

Line 169-174

“Level of blood pressure is classified as Normal; systolic blood pressure <120 and diastolic blood pressure <80 mm Hg, Elevated; systolic blood pressure 120-129 mm Hg and diastolic blood pressure <80 mm Hg, Hypertension: stage 1; systolic blood pressure 130-139 mm Hg or diastolic blood pressure 80-89 mm Hg and Hypertension: stage 2; systolic blood pressure =140 mm Hg or diastolic blood pressure =90 mm Hg”. Such classification is not used in the result section. Better to present information in a uniform manner.

The STEPS manual have an updated version as of 26 January 2017, why did you stick to the older version?

Data analysis

The P-value cutoff to declare significance mentioned in the methodology section is inconsistent with that in the result section.

Results

Table 2: Marital status…….check for percentage.

Table 3: the percentage for drinking amount, frequency of eating fruit, serving of fruits, frequency of eating vegetables, serving of vegetables, exercise frequency, exercise duration should be calculated out of 100%.

Factors associated with undiagnosed hypertension: in the logistic regression analysis, how did you code for “yes” and “no” of undiagnosed hypertension? as there is a miss match between the COR and the frequency placed under each variable.

Discussion

Line 301: can we categorize the age group of 35-44 in the old age group?

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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: Yes: Firehiwot Amare

[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-20-28178R1

Undiagnosed Hypertension And Associated Factors Among Bank Workers In Bahir Dar City, Northwest, Ethiopia, 2020. A Cross-Sectional Study.

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Kerie,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE.  After review, there are a few changes to the manuscript that the referee has suggested, including a better presentation of the sample size calculation. 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 Jun 20 2021 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: http://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,

Colin Johnson, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal Requirements:

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. 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

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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

**********

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

Reviewer #1: 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

**********

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: No

**********

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: Abstract

Methods: line 37 “multiple logistic regression analysis was implemented” multiple should be replaced with multivariate.

Methods and materials

Participants:

Line 121 better to replace study subjects with study participants.

Line 124 it’s not clear whether the proportional allocation preceded or succeeded the selection of the bank workers by the random generator software.

Sample size calculation should not be deleted instead presented in a precise manner (I don’t think the recommendation of the previous reviewer was for you to delete the whole thing)

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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: Yes: Firehiwot Amare (B.Pharm; M.Pharm)

[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.

Undiagnosed Hypertension And Associated Factors Among Bank Workers In Bahir Dar City, Northwest, Ethiopia, 2020. A Cross-Sectional Study.

PONE-D-20-28178R2

Dear Dr. Kerie,

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,

Colin Johnson, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments: