PONE-D-22-21981Guidelines’ recommendations for the treatment-resistant depression: a systematic review of their quality

PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

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Comments to the Author

1. Does the manuscript adhere to the experimental procedures and analyses described in the Registered Report Protocol?

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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2. If the manuscript reports exploratory analyses or experimental procedures not outlined in the original Registered Report Protocol, are these reasonable, justified and methodologically sound?

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Are the conclusions supported by the data and do they address the research question presented in the Registered Report Protocol?

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

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6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: Overall Comments

• This is a clear and well-written systematic review of the quality of guidelines’ recommendations for treatment-resistant depression. The authors provide an adequate rationale for conducting such an important study. They give sufficient explanations of the methods and analysis and key results that flowed well. I provide a few minor comments for possible edits in different sections of the manuscript.

Abstract

• Then/so – use one word instead. Line 57

• Consider summarising the results in the abstract – the details of which CPGs used specific terminologies can be described in the results section in the manuscript.

Introduction

• Consider using “people with depression” instead of “depressed people” – line 81

• Some of the studies you cited implicitly evaluated the quality of recommendations in the CPGs they reviewed. Consider rephrasing this line: “currently no study that has evaluated the quality of their recommendations”. Line 130-133.

Materials and methods

• Describe your exclusion criteria here. I see you mention some of these in the results section in Line 186-187.

Discussion

• You summarise the results again in the discussion section of the paper. The focus in this section should be a discussion of the implications of these differences/similarities or what they mean for clinical practice.

Reviewer #2: Thank you - this is a very interesting systematic review.

Some comments:

Line 147 to 150: please include the timeframe of the search.

Line 151: you should mention about excluding duplicates

Line 163 to 165: explain what each domain (i.e. domain 3 for AGREE II and domain 1 for AGREE-REX) are - you explained it

in the protocol but the reader should not need to go look up the protocol or the AGREE tools to understand which domain is being referred to.

Line 186: "7" should be "seven"

Table 1: explain abbreviations ("R", "NM", "CI") and the superscripts "#" and "*"

Line 242, 307, 466, 484: text in italics - should be normal text

Line 313: please reword this sentence - it does not read well. Consider something like "does not recommend routine use of carbamazepine..."

Line 331-2: Please clarify this sentence ("This situation...been conducted") - it is confusing

Line 333-7: Please reword this last sentence. It is long, repetitive and unclear

There are a number of grammatical errors (mostly punctuation) that should be corrected

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Guidelines’ recommendations for the treatment-resistant depression: a systematic review of their quality

PONE-D-22-21981R1

Dear Dr. Gabriel,

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,

Norio Yasui-Furukori

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

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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

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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: The authors have addressed all my comments. I am satisfied with their edits, and I recommend that this article be accepted for publication.

Reviewer #2: Changes notes, review reads well and is very interesting. All my concerns have been addressed. Thanks.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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