Premature mortality and years of potential life lost from cardiovascular diseases: Protocol of a systematic review and meta-analysis

Wan Shakira Rodzlan Hasani; Nor Asiah Muhamad; Nur Hasnah Maamor; Tengku Muhammad Hanis; Chen Xin Wee; Muhammad Radzi Abu Hassan; Zulkarnain Abdul Karim; Kamarul Imran Musa

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0284052

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionAugust 4, 2022
15 Feb 2023 Decision Letter - Ahmed Mustafa Rashid, Editor PONE-D-22-21753Premature mortality and years of potential life lost from cardiovascular diseases: protocol of a systematic review and meta-analysisPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Rodzlan Hasani, 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. If there are any similar comments, please address comments of both reviewers. You may mention that the edit was already done for reviewer ''n'', comment ''x''. Please submit your revised manuscript by Apr 01 2023 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: https://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, Ahmed Mustafa Rashid Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements. 1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf 2. Please include a caption for figure 1. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. Does the manuscript provide a valid rationale for the proposed study, with clearly identified and justified research questions? The research question outlined is expected to address a valid academic problem or topic and contribute to the base of knowledge in the field. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes ******** 2. Is the protocol technically sound and planned in a manner that will lead to a meaningful outcome and allow testing the stated hypotheses? The manuscript should describe the methods in sufficient detail to prevent undisclosed flexibility in the experimental procedure or analysis pipeline, including sufficient outcome-neutral conditions (e.g. necessary controls, absence of floor or ceiling effects) to test the proposed hypotheses and a statistical power analysis where applicable. As there may be aspects of the methodology and analysis which can only be refined once the work is undertaken, authors should outline potential assumptions and explicitly describe what aspects of the proposed analyses, if any, are exploratory. Reviewer #1: Partly Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes ****** 3. Is the methodology feasible and described in sufficient detail to allow the work to be replicable? Descriptions of methods and materials in the protocol should be reported in sufficient detail for another researcher to reproduce all experiments and analyses. The protocol should describe the appropriate controls, sample size calculations, and replication needed to ensure that the data are robust and reproducible. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes ****** 4. Have the authors described where all data underlying the findings will be made available when the study is complete? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception, at the time of publication. 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 Reviewer #3: 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: Yes Reviewer #2: No Reviewer #3: Yes ****** 6. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above and, if applicable, provide comments about issues authors must address before this protocol can be accepted for publication. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about research or publication ethics. You may also provide optional suggestions and comments to authors that they might find helpful in planning their study. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: The protocol identifies a relevant gap in the existing evidence. Authors have proposed to combine observational studies but the adjustments for combining cohort, case control and cross-sectional studies are not mentioned in detail. As these designs address different questions it is important to know how authors plan to address the differences due to study design. Its not unusual to combine observational with intervention data but there are very few details about bringing the evidence from these designs together in the protocol. Details about the analysis plan should be included. There's little or no information about assessing the risk of bias in the interventional studies. Overall its an interesting protocol and I wish authors all the best for their review. Reviewer #2: Wan et al. described a study protocol on “Premature mortality and years of potential life lost from cardiovascular diseases: protocol of a systematic review and meta-analysis” in order to identify studies and synthesize their findings on years of potential life lost (YPLL) and standard mortality ratios (SMRs) for premature cardiovascular diseases mortality. However, in my opinion, the manuscript can be improved by incorporating the following edits: 1) In the abstract, authors are requested to precisely summarize each section including the introduction, objectives, methods, and discussion for better clarity for the readers. 2) In the introduction, the authors have described, ‘’Although CVD mortality rates have seen dramatic declines in the past two decades (1990 - 2019)’’. They are requested to please rephrase the statement by either removing the phrase 'past two decades' or '1990-2019' since they do not complement each other. 3) In the introduction, the authors stated, ‘’A year of potential life lost (YPLL) is a standardised parameter commonly used to measure the burden of disease due to premature mortality.’’ This information should be evidenced with a reference for the authenticity of the content. 4) In the introduction, the authors have written ‘OECD.’ It is advised to please write the expanded form, as it is used in the manuscript for the first time. 5) In the search strategy, the authors have described ‘’All the four search themes will be combined.’’ However, only 3 themes have been defined above. 6) In the study selection, authors could consider removing the link to Mendeley reference management software as a reference has already been provided. 7) The authors are advised to use only abbreviations throughout the manuscript if the expanded forms have already been described. For example, writing ‘NCDs’ instead of ‘non-communicable diseases’ again. 8) The authors are advised to please proofread their manuscript as it contains a few grammatical and punctuation errors and some inappropriately structured sentences. Reviewer #3: Hasani et al have formulated a protocol of a systematic review and meta-analysis on “Premature mortality and years of potential life lost from cardiovascular diseases” to derive updated estimates of years of potential life lost (YPLL) due CVD and standardized mortality ratios (SMRs) of premature CVD mortality. In my opinion, a few edits can be incorporated to further improve the manuscript: 1. The ‘abstract’ and ‘statistical analysis’ sections have no mention of ‘p values’. The authors should provide information of what p value will be considered as significant to highlight the significance of the results this study will produce. 2. In point 1 of the inclusion criteria, please use the abbreviation of ‘years of potential life lost’ as YPLL since the expanded form has been used earlier in the manuscript. 3. From point 4 of the inclusion criteria, the authors should consider removing “We will also consider including any” from the rest of the phrase for maintaining the structure of this section. 4. In the ‘discussion’ section, the authors have described the limitations of using observational studies as “Such studies have limitations in drawing precise inferences”. However, this is a vague point and can be replaced by “observational studies can be more prone to bias and confounding”. ****** 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: Mohammad Arham Siddiq Reviewer #3: No ******** [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. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0284052.r001
Revision 1
28 Feb 2023 Author Response Response to reviewer’s 1 comments The protocol identifies a relevant gap in the existing evidence. Author’s response Dear reviewer, we are grateful for the comment. In response to this comment, we have revamped this review as follows: 1) Authors have proposed to combine observational studies but the adjustments for combining cohort, case control and cross-sectional studies are not mentioned in detail. As these designs address different questions it is important to know how authors plan to address the differences due to study design. Thank you for comment. We agree with your point. Thus, we added a few statements about combining all observational studies under the inclusion criteria (no. 5). 2) Its not unusual to combine observational with intervention data but there are very few details about bringing the evidence from these designs together in the protocol. Details about the analysis plan should be included. We appreciate your comment. We will present separately the outcomes from the observational study and the interventional study. We added this statement under inclusion criteria (no. 5). We also added the plan for analysis under "Data Analysis and Statistical Analysis" (last paragraph). 3) There's little or no information about assessing the risk of bias in the interventional studies. Thank you very much for your comments. We added the measurement tools (ACROBAT-NRSi) under section Quality assessment (last paragraph). 4) Overall its an interesting protocol and I wish authors all the best for their review. Thank you for your positive feedback on our protocol. We appreciate your encouragement and support for our research. We are committed to conducting a high-quality review and providing valuable insights into the topic of interest. We will do our best to address any concerns or suggestions you may have to further improve the protocol and ensure a rigorous and comprehensive review. Thank you for your time and consideration. Response to reviewer’s 2 comments Wan et al. described a study protocol on “Premature mortality and years of potential life lost from cardiovascular diseases: protocol of a systematic review and meta-analysis” in order to identify studies and synthesize their findings on years of potential life lost (YPLL) and standard mortality ratios (SMRs) for premature cardiovascular diseases mortality. However, in my opinion, the manuscript can be improved by incorporating the following edits: Author’s response Dear reviewer, we greatly appreciate your feedback. We have provided our point-by-point response to each of your comments below. 1) In the abstract, authors are requested to precisely summarize each section including the introduction, objectives, methods, and discussion for better clarity for the readers. We appreciate your comment. We revised our abstract as suggested. We hope that the revised abstract has met your expectations. 2) In the introduction, the authors have described, ‘’Although CVD mortality rates have seen dramatic declines in the past two decades (1990 - 2019)’’. They are requested to please rephrase the statement by either removing the phrase 'past two decades' or '1990-2019' since they do not complement each other. Thank you for your comment. We changed the sentences by removing “1990-2019” based on your suggestions. 3) In the introduction, the authors stated, ‘’A year of potential life lost (YPLL) is a standardised parameter commonly used to measure the burden of disease due to premature mortality.’’ This information should be evidenced with a reference for the authenticity of the content. Thank you for your suggestion. We added citation for this statement. 4) In the introduction, the authors have written ‘OECD.’ It is advised to please write the expanded form, as it is used in the manuscript for the first time. Appreciate your suggestion. We added the abbreviation for OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) in text. 5) In the search strategy, the authors have described ‘’All the four search themes will be combined.’’ However, only 3 themes have been defined above. We appreciated your suggestion. Apologies for overlooking this. We changed the sentence into “All the three search….” 6) In the study selection, authors could consider removing the link to Mendeley reference management software as a reference has already been provided. Thank you for your comment. The link for Mendeley reference was removed. 7) The authors are advised to use only abbreviations throughout the manuscript if the expanded forms have already been described. For example, writing ‘NCDs’ instead of ‘non-communicable diseases’ again. Thank you for the suggestion. We agreed with your point. We changed ‘non-communicable diseases’ to NCD throughout the manuscript. 8) The authors are advised to please proofread their manuscript as it contains a few grammatical and punctuation errors and some inappropriately structured sentences. Thank you for taking the time to review our manuscript. We apologize for any grammatical and punctuation errors that were present in the initial submission. We have conducted a thorough proofreading of the manuscript and made the necessary corrections. Additionally, we have restructured some of the sentences to improve their clarity and flow. We hope that these changes have addressed the concerns you raised regarding the appropriateness of the sentence structure. Response to reviewer’s 3 comments Hasani et al have formulated a protocol of a systematic review and meta-analysis on “Premature mortality and years of potential life lost from cardiovascular diseases” to derive updated estimates of years of potential life lost (YPLL) due CVD and standardized mortality ratios (SMRs) of premature CVD mortality. In my opinion, a few edits can be incorporated to further improve the manuscript: Author’s response Dear reviewer, we are very grateful for your comments. Herewith we represent our point-by-point response to each comment made by you. 1) The ‘abstract’ and ‘statistical analysis’ sections have no mention of ‘p values’. The authors should provide information of what p value will be considered as significant to highlight the significance of the results this study will produce. Thank you very much for your comment. We added the p value in the abstract and ‘statistical analysis’ sections. In this review, "p value" refers to the statistical significance of the heterogeneity test, which is typically reported using the Q statistic and associated p-value. 2) In point 1 of the inclusion criteria, please use the abbreviation of ‘years of potential life lost’ as YPLL since the expanded form has been used earlier in the manuscript. Thank you for comment. The sentence was edited with YPLL. Throughout the manuscript, we also used the term SEYLL (standard expected years of life lost) together with YPLL. SEYLL is the other years of life lost method proposed by the GBD study. Because SEYLL is also widely used, we included it in our review. So, we planned to measure both estimated YPLL (by Gardner's method) and SEYLL (from the GBD study). 3) From point 4 of the inclusion criteria, the authors should consider removing “We will also consider including any” from the rest of the phrase for maintaining the structure of this section. Thank you for your comment. The sentence for “We will also consider including any” was removed. 4) In the ‘discussion’ section, the authors have described the limitations of using observational studies as “Such studies have limitations in drawing precise inferences”. However, this is a vague point and can be replaced by “observational studies can be more prone to bias and confounding”. We appreciate your comment and agree with your point. We changed the sentence as suggested. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: 280223_Response to reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0284052.r002
22 Mar 2023 Decision Letter - Ahmed Mustafa Rashid, Editor Premature mortality and years of potential life lost from cardiovascular diseases: protocol of a systematic review and meta-analysis PONE-D-22-21753R1 Dear Dr. Rodzlan Hasani, 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. An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org. 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, Ahmed Mustafa Rashid Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0284052.r003
Formally Accepted
24 Apr 2023 Acceptance Letter - Ahmed Mustafa Rashid, Editor PONE-D-22-21753R1 Premature mortality and years of potential life lost from cardiovascular diseases: protocol of a systematic review and meta-analysis Dear Dr. Rodzlan Hasani: I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. 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. If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Dr. Ahmed Mustafa Rashid Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0284052.r004

Open letter on the publication of peer review reports

PLOS recognizes the benefits of transparency in the peer review process. Therefore, we enable the publication of all of the content of peer review and author responses alongside final, published articles. Reviewers remain anonymous, unless they choose to reveal their names.

We encourage other journals to join us in this initiative. We hope that our action inspires the community, including researchers, research funders, and research institutions, to recognize the benefits of published peer review reports for all parts of the research system.

Learn more at ASAPbio .