Peer Review History

Original SubmissionMay 18, 2023
Decision Letter - Dario Ummarino, PhD, Editor

PONE-D-23-15308Uncontrolled Hypertension and Its Predictors among Hypertensive Patients in Sub-Saharan Africa: Systematic Review and Meta-AnalysisPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Aytenew,

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 note that we have only been able to secure a single reviewer to assess your manuscript. We are issuing a decision on your manuscript at this point to prevent further delays in the evaluation of your manuscript. Please be aware that the editor who handles your revised manuscript might find it necessary to invite additional reviewers to assess this work once the revised manuscript is submitted. However, we will aim to proceed on the basis of this single review if possible.  Please submit your revised manuscript by Aug 28 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,

Dario Ummarino, PhD

Staff 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. We noticed you have some minor occurrence of overlapping text with the following previous publication(s), which needs to be addressed:

- https://doi.org/10.1111/tmi.13684

- https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0220710

- https://doi.org/10.2147/IBPC.S245068

- 10.23937/2474-3690/1510057

In your revision ensure you cite all your sources (including your own works), and quote or rephrase any duplicated text outside the methods section. Further consideration is dependent on these concerns being addressed.

3. Please include a separate caption for each figure in your manuscript.

[Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.]

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

**********

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: 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: Title: Uncontrolled Hypertension and Its Predictors among Hypertensive Patients in Sub-Saharan Africa: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

In this systematic review and meta-analysis, Aytenew et al aimed to determine the pooled burden of uncontrolled hypertension and identify its predictors. This is a commendable effort. However, there are several limitations, and some were not identified in the manuscript.

Firstly, why restrict the search to studies published between 2014 and 2023 in SSA? The reason for this should be explained in the discussion, because several important studies were omitted. In a previous metaanalysis on a similar subject, Addo et al included 37 studies published between 1975 and 2006 (Addo J, Smeeth L, Leon DA. Hypertension in sub-saharan Africa: a systematic review. Hypertension. 2007 Dec;50(6):1012-8. doi: 10.1161/HYPERTENSIONAHA.107.093336. Epub 2007 Oct 22.), which I believe would have enriched the present metaanalysis.

Secondly and importantly, 19/24 studies in the present metaanalysis were from Ethiopia (i.e. two-thirds of the studied population). This would make the title of the manuscript inappropriate. Thus the investigators may consider expanding the metaanalysis to span across more years and include studies from other countries. Otherwise the title should be modified to show that most of the data is from Ethiopia, for example "Uncontrolled Hypertension and Its Predictors among Hypertensive Patients in Ethiopia and selected Sub-Saharan African countries: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis".

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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: No

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Revision 1

Editor Comment #01: 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

Authors’ response: Recognizing your comment, we have looked at the PLOS ONE style templates using the given link and we have ensured that our manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The requested corrections have been included throughout the revised version manuscript.

Editor Comment #02: We noticed you have some minor occurrence of overlapping text with the following previous publication(s), which needs to be addressed:

- https://doi.org/10.1111/tmi.13684

- https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0220710

- https://doi.org/10.2147/IBPC.S245068

Authors’ response: We are convinced of this comment, and we have revised these overlapping texts in the manuscript accordingly.

Editor Comment #03: In your revision ensure you cite all your sources (including your own works), and quote or rephrase any duplicated text outside the methods section.

Authors’ response: Accepting your valuable comment, we have revised the duplicated texts outside the method section of the manuscript.

Editor Comment #04: Please include a separate caption for each figure in your manuscript.

Authors’ response: Recognizing your comment, we included a separate caption for each figure in the manuscript.

Reviewer # 1:

Reviewer # 1 comment and suggestion #01: Title: Uncontrolled Hypertension and Its Predictors among Hypertensive Patients in Sub-Saharan Africa: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

In this systematic review and meta-analysis, Aytenew et al aimed to determine the pooled burden of uncontrolled hypertension and identify its predictors. This is a commendable effort. However, there are several limitations, and some were not identified in the manuscript.

Firstly, why restrict the search to studies published between 2014 and 2023 in SSA? The reason for this should be explained in the discussion, because several important studies were omitted. In a previous meta-analysis on a similar subject, Addo et al included 37 studies published between 1975 and 2006 (Addo J, Smeeth L, Leon DA. Hypertension in Sub-Saharan Africa: a systematic review. Hypertension. 2007 Dec;50(6):1012-8. doi: 10.1161/HYPERTENSIONAHA.107.093336. Epub 2007 Oct 22.), which I believe would have enriched the present meta-analysis.

Authors’ response: Thank you for your critical view of our manuscript! Today, the diagnostic modalities, treatment protocols, burden of chronic illnesses including hypertension and the living styles of the community are changed through time. Therefore, the findings of the 37 studies published between 1975 and 2006 might not represent the current situations (they are outdated). We have searched extensively all available primary studies published after this review across the region, unfortunately, the searched studies laid between the year 2014 and 2023. So, when we said “the search was restricted to studies published between 2014 and 2023”, to mean that unfortunately, the searched studies laid between 2014 and 2023 in SSA.

Reviewer #1 comment and suggestion #02: Secondly and importantly, 19/24 studies in the present meta-analysis were from Ethiopia (i.e., two-thirds of the studied population). This would make the title of the manuscript inappropriate. Thus, the investigators may consider expanding the meta-analysis to span across more years and include studies from other countries. Otherwise, the title should be modified to show that most of the data is from Ethiopia, for example "Uncontrolled Hypertension and Its Predictors among Hypertensive Patients in Ethiopia and selected Sub-Saharan African countries: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis".

Authors’ response: We have accepted the given comment fully. Instead of including studies conducted outside SSA (aimed to determine the pooled prevalence of uncontrolled hypertension in SSA), we have fully accepted your feedback to modify the title, and we have revised the title directly based on the given direction.

Attachments
Attachment
Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx
Decision Letter - Muktar Beshir Ahmed, Editor

PONE-D-23-15308R1Uncontrolled hypertension and its predictors among hypertensive patients in Ethiopia and selected Sub-Saharan African countries: Systematic review and Meta-analysisPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Aytenew,

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 submit your revised manuscript by Nov 22 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,

Muktar Beshir Ahmed, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

[Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.]

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: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

Reviewer #3: (No Response)

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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: Partly

Reviewer #2: Partly

Reviewer #3: Partly

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

Reviewer #1: N/A

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: No

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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

Reviewer #3: 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: No

Reviewer #3: No

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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: I still believe that if the authors can remove "Ethiopia" from their search terms, they will get several additional articles to include in the analysis. Including "Ethiopia" in the search terms will surely introduce bias in the result.

They can take a look at the article cited below to see that the use of appropriate search terms could reveal a more robust result:

Ataklte F, Erqou S, Kaptoge S, Taye B, Echouffo-Tcheugui JB, Kengne AP. Burden of undiagnosed hypertension in sub-saharan Africa: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Hypertension. 2015 Feb;65(2):291-8. doi: 10.1161/HYPERTENSIONAHA.114.04394. Epub 2014 Nov 10. PMID: 25385758.

Reviewer #2: A recently published systematic review (SR) covers the same subject matter and research inquiry. If the authors intend to examine the prevalence of uncontrolled hypertension in low- and middle-income countries, I might consider reviewing a manuscript. Alternatively, to prevent duplicating published work, I recommend the authors to conduct a risk/ aetiology SR concerning risk factors for uncontrolled hypertension in Ethiopia.

Click the link below to see the similar articles published recently:

10.1186/s12872-020-01414-3

Uncontrolled hypertension in Ethiopia: a systematic review and meta-analysis of institution-based observational studies | BMC Cardiovascular Disorders | Full Text (biomedcentral.com)

Reviewer #3: Table 1 better present population characteristics, for examples age, race, sex, and more.

Table 1 does not correctly display the studys’ orresponding references. : Abegaz TM et al[2022] cannot be found in the reference list. There is a typo in "Abdissa." Animut's reference lists the year as "2018," but Table 1 indicates "2022."

It is better to add a reference index number to each study.

Several studies were conducted at UoGH around same time. Are they derived from the same patient cohort?

Line 256, the selection of the random-effects model should be based on the research question and study design. It is not selected for assessing the influence of a single primary study on the overall meta-analysis.

Line 255 sensitivity analysis:

The funnel plot is not a form of sensitivity analysis.The paragraph is not clearly written. Figure 3 (not Figure 4) does not appear to be symmetric.

Subgroup analyses by sample sizes or by the year 2020 are irrelevant and arbitrary. It would be more appropriate to perform subgroup analyses based on regions (such as Ethiopia, SE Ethiopia, NE Ethiopia) or similar age groups and other relevant characteristics.

Line 276 and predictors:

This section is not clearly written. For cross-sectional studies, the relationship is more likely to represent an association rather than a prediction. It is unclear how the adjusted odds ratios were calculated. Were these calculated from pooled analysis? Did the studies adjust for the same covariates in logistic regression? If not, the pooled results may be influenced by bias.

**********

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: No

Reviewer #3: No

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[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.

Revision 2

Dear Editors and Reviewers:

We sincerely appreciate the valuable comments and suggestions you raised. The thorough review helped immensely in the shaping of the manuscript. The comments and suggestions have been closely followed and revisions have been made accordingly. The following are the questions extracted from the Editors and Reviewers’ comments along with our summarized responses. Thank you very much for your constructive comments. We tried to inculcate your comments and questions as described below. The changes will be attached with

Title: Uncontrolled hypertension among hypertensive patients in Sub-Saharan Africa: Systematic review and Meta-analysis.

Authors:

TM: tigabumunye21@gmail.com

AK: amarekassaw2009@gmail.com

AS: amaresimegn99@gmail.com

GN: gedefayen@gmail.com

SA: sintie579@gmail.com

YT: tesfahunyohannes08@gmail.com

SD: solomondemis@gmail.com

DK: demewozk@yahoo.com

SZ: shegawzn@gmail.com

WN: workunecho@gmail.com

Reviewer #1:

Reviewer #1 comment and suggestion #01: I still believe that if the authors can remove "Ethiopia" from their search terms, they will get several additional articles to include in the analysis. Including "Ethiopia" in the search terms will surely introduce bias in the result. They can take a look at the article cited below to see that the use of appropriate search terms could reveal a more robust result:

Ataklte F, Erqou S, Kaptoge S, Taye B, Echouffo-Tcheugui JB, Kengne AP. Burden of undiagnosed hypertension in Sub-Saharan Africa: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Hypertension. 2015 Feb; 65(2):291-8. Doi: 10.1161/HYPERTENSIONAHA.114.04394. Epub 2014 Nov 10. PMID: 25385758.

Authors’ response: Thank you for your critical view of our manuscript! We tried to search articles extensively using different MeSH terms, even by removing "Ethiopia" across Sub-Saharan African countries. During the search process, we have already searched the above cited article (Burden of undiagnosed hypertension in Sub-Saharan Africa: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Hypertension, 2015 Feb; 65(2):291-8), but it was not in line with our title (Uncontrolled hypertension…).

Reviewer #2:

Reviewer #2 comment and suggestion #01: A recently published systematic review (SR) covers the same subject matter and research inquiry. If the authors intend to examine the prevalence of uncontrolled hypertension in low- and middle-income countries, I might consider reviewing a manuscript. Alternatively, to prevent duplicating published work, I recommend the authors to conduct a risk/etiology SR concerning risk factors for uncontrolled hypertension in Ethiopia. Click the link below to see the similar articles published recently: 10.1186/s12872-020-01414-3

Uncontrolled hypertension in Ethiopia: A systematic review and meta-analysis of institution-based observational studies | BMC Cardiovascular Disorders | Full Text (biomedcentral.com).

Authors’ response: Definitely! Our primary objective was to estimate the pooled prevalence of uncontrolled hypertension among hypertensive patients in Sub-Saharan Africa, and we have also cited the above reference on reference number 14 in the manuscript.

Reviewer #3:

Reviewer #3 comment and suggestion #01: Table 1 better present population characteristics, for examples age, race, sex, and more.

Authors’ response: Thank you for your valuable comment! We have revised the table based on the given direction, but the age of the target population was already operationalized in the manuscript (Age ≥18 years).

Reviewer #3 comment and suggestion #02: Table 1 does not correctly display the studys’ corresponding references. : Abegaz TM et al [2022] cannot be found in the reference list. There is a typo in "Abdissa." Animut's reference lists the year as "2018," but Table 1 indicates "2022."

Authors’ response: Thank you for your critical view and constructive comment! We have revised the studys’ corresponding references in Table 1 accordingly.

Reviewer #3 comment and suggestion #03: It is better to add a reference index number to each study.

Authors’ response: Thank you for your valuable comment! We have put a reference index number to each study in the table.

Reviewer #3 comment and suggestion #04: Several studies were conducted at UoGH around same time. Are they derived from the same patient cohort?

Authors’ response: Thank you for your valuable comment! These studies were carried out at UoGH on different patient cohort within some time variation ranging from 2017 to 2022.

Reviewer #3 comment and suggestion #05: Line 256, the selection of the random-effects model should be based on the research question and study design. It is not selected for assessing the influence of a single primary study on the overall meta-analysis.

Authors’ response: Accepting your valuable comment, we have revised it

Reviewer #3 comment and suggestion #06: Line 255 sensitivity analysis:

The funnel plot is not a form of sensitivity analysis. The paragraph is not clearly written. Figure 3 (not Figure 4) does not appear to be symmetric.

Authors’ response: Thank you for your valuable comment! We have revised this paragraph. But the sensitivity analysis was located on fig 4 not fig 3, because fig 3 was already located above this section/paragraph stating publication bias.

Reviewer #3 comment and suggestion #07: Subgroup analyses by sample sizes or by the year 2020 are irrelevant and arbitrary. It would be more appropriate to perform subgroup analyses based on regions (such as Ethiopia, SE Ethiopia, NE Ethiopia) or similar age groups and other relevant characteristics.

Authors’ response: Accepting your valuable comment, we have done the subgroup analysis using the study setting/area.

Reviewer #3 comment and suggestion #08: Line 276 and predictors:

This section is not clearly written. For cross-sectional studies, the relationship is more likely to represent an association rather than a prediction. It is unclear how the adjusted odds ratios were calculated. Were these calculated from pooled analysis? Did the studies adjust for the same covariates in logistic regression? If not, the pooled results may be influenced by bias.

Authors’ response: Thank you for your constructive comments! Yes! For cross-sectional studies, the relationship is more of an association not a prediction. Therefore, we have revised this section based on the given direction. And the adjusted odds ratios were calculated from the pooled analysis. The studies were also adjusted for the same covariates in logistic regression.

Attachments
Attachment
Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx
Decision Letter - Muktar Beshir Ahmed, Editor

PONE-D-23-15308R2Uncontrolled hypertension among hypertensive patients in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Systematic review and Meta-analysisPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Aytenew,

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 submit your revised manuscript by Mar 01 2024 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,

Muktar Beshir Ahmed, PhD

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.

Additional Editor Comments:

We appreciate your effort in revising the search strategy. Please provide a detailed explanation of the search strategy in the revised manuscript. As mentioned in the response letter, it appears that you revised the search strategy using various MeSH terms and removing ‘Ethiopia’ to conduct an extensive search across Sub-Saharan African countries.

However, the results section indicates that the number of studies captured in the new search strategy for sub-Saharan Africa does not seem accurate. The new strategy did not capture additional studies, as evidenced in the results section where 19 out of 26 studies are from Ethiopia. This suggests that the key strategy may not have been updated correctly.  

[Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.]

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 #3: 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: (No Response)

Reviewer #3: (No Response)

**********

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

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #3: (No Response)

**********

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: (No Response)

Reviewer #3: (No Response)

**********

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 Response)

Reviewer #3: (No Response)

**********

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 #3: All of my comments were addressed.

The article is good for publication.

I have no more concerns.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #3: No

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Revision 3

Editor Comment #01:

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.

Authors’ response: Thank you for your critical view of our manuscript! We have reviewed and revised our reference list intensively.

Editor Comment #02:

Please provide a detailed explanation of the search strategy in the revised manuscript. As mentioned in the response letter, it appears that you revised the search strategy using various MeSH terms and removing ‘Ethiopia’ to conduct an extensive search across Sub-Saharan African countries.

However, the results section indicates that the number of studies captured in the new search strategy for sub-Saharan Africa does not seem accurate. The new strategy did not capture additional studies, as evidenced in the results section where 19 out of 26 studies are from Ethiopia. This suggests that the key strategy may not have been updated correctly.

Authors’ response: Thank you for your valuable comment. We have provided a detailed explanation of the search strategy to get additional primary studies across Sub-Saharan African countries using various MeSH terms and removing ‘Ethiopia’ in the revised manuscript. However, we couldn’t get any more for this review.

Editor Comment #03:

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.

Authors’ response: Thank you! We have used the PACE tool to make our figures suitable for PLOS requirements.

Attachments
Attachment
Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx
Decision Letter - Guoying Wang, Editor

Uncontrolled hypertension among hypertensive patients in Sub-Saharan Africa: A systematic review and meta-analysis

PONE-D-23-15308R3

Dear Dr. Aytenew,

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 will be generated when your article is formally accepted. Please note, if your institution has a publishing partnership with PLOS and your article meets the relevant criteria, all or part of your publication costs will be covered. Please make sure your user information is up-to-date by logging into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and clicking the ‘Update My Information' link at the top of the page. If you have any questions relating to publication charges, 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,

Guoying Wang, MD, 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 #3: (No Response)

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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 #3: (No Response)

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #3: (No Response)

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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 #3: (No Response)

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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 #3: (No Response)

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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 #3: All of my comments were addressed.

The article is good for publication.

I have no more concerns.

**********

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 #3: No

**********

Formally Accepted
Acceptance Letter - Guoying Wang, Editor

PONE-D-23-15308R3

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Aytenew,

I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now being handed over to our production team.

At this stage, our production department will prepare your paper for publication. This includes ensuring the following:

* All references, tables, and figures are properly cited

* All relevant supporting information is included in the manuscript submission,

* There are no issues that prevent the paper from being properly typeset

If revisions are needed, the production department will contact you directly to resolve them. If no revisions are needed, you will receive an email when the publication date has been set. At this time, we do not offer pre-publication proofs to authors during production of the accepted work. Please keep in mind that we are working through a large volume of accepted articles, so please give us a few weeks to review your paper and let you know the next and final steps.

Lastly, 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 customercare@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. Guoying Wang

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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