PONE-D-22-26056The Prevalence and Correlates of Depression among Patients with Chronic Diseases in the United Arab EmiratesPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Suliman,

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 clarify the definitions of each chronic disease investigated in the manuscript. If needed, please also include a section for inclusion and exclusion criteria. A reviewer found the analysis presented in table 2 a bit confusing. Please clarify. The authors have suggested in the paragraph following table 2 that the authors are describing a univariate result analysis. This seems to be the results of a bivariate analysis with Crude Odds Ratios presented. Please clarify. A reviewer also wondered if there was any rational for choosing the Ambulatory Health Services for the recruitment of patients, knowing that patients who present to such services usually come in an acute state. This might influence the way participants respond to the questions on the PHQ questionnaire. Recruiting patients in a more stable environment might give a totally different results.

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PLOS ONE

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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: No

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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: No

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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: This is a cross-sectional study to examine the prevalence and corelates of depression among a sample of patients with chronic diseases in the UAE. The study is well conducted and presented. I would suggest to scale the y-axis of figure 1 from 0-100.

Reviewer #2: It was a pleasure to review this piece of work. I must say this is an interesting piece of work.

I just have a few comments to make.

1. The article is entitled 'The Prevalence and Correlates of Depression among Patients with Chronic Diseases in the United Arab Emirates'. This suggests that all participants recruited have a chronic medical condition. In the manuscript, I couldn't find anywhere the definition for what was considered a chronic medical condition and how this guided the authors in choosing their participants. I would suggest including a section for inclusion and exclusion criteria. This will make it clearer for the readers.

2. I also found the analysis presented in table 2 a bit confusing, can the authors confirm that everyone who was included in the study had a chronic medical condition? If that was the case then our input variable can be broadly classified into 'present or absent' of a chronic medical condition and the outcome variables will be the correlates or associated factors. A separate table may be used to show the prevalence of depression in the different categories of chronic medical condition present in the participants

3. The authors have suggested in the paragraph following table 2 that the authors are describing a univariate result analysis. This seems to be the results of a bivariate analysis with Crude Odds Ratios presented. Can the authors verify this.

4. I was wondering if there was any rational for choosing the Ambulatory Health Services for the recruitment of patients, knowing that patients who present to such services usually come in an acute state. This might influence the way participants respond to the questions on the PHQ questionnaire. Recruiting patients in a more stable environment might give a totally different results.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes: Stewart Ndutard Ngasa

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The Prevalence and Correlates of Depression among Patients with Chronic Diseases in the United Arab Emirates

PONE-D-22-26056R1

Dear Dr. Suliman,

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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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,

Nabeel Al-Yateem, 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

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

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: No

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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

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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: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: All suggestions for improvement have been made by the authors. This article now reads better and I recommend its accepted.

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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: Yes: Stewart Ndutard Ngasa

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