Peer Review History

Original SubmissionJuly 29, 2023
Decision Letter - Hean Teik Ong, Editor

PONE-D-23-23791Trends and Influence Factors in the Prevalence, Awareness, Treatment, and Control of Hypertension among US Adults from 1999 to 2018PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Yang,

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 address comments and revisions requested by reviewers. Please submit your revised manuscript by Oct 08 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. 

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Hean Teik Ong

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Additional Editor Comments:

Please address comments and revisions requested by reviewers.

[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

Reviewer #2: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: I Don't Know

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: 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

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: Regarding this statement in page 4

However, there is no estimation of the trends in the prevalence, awareness, treatment, and control of hypertension over a 20-years period in the US, and few studies have explored the factors influencing hypertension incidence, awareness, treatment, and control simultaneously.

There are 2 other articles that cover the same population over an almost similar period of time

1) Trends in the Prevalence, Awareness, Treatment, and Control of Hypertension among Young Adults in the United States, 1999–2014

Yiyi Zhang, and Andrew E Moran, MD. Hypertension. 2017 Oct; 70(4): 736–742.

2)Trends in Blood Pressure Control Among US Adults With Hypertension, 1999-2000 to 2017-2018

Paul Muntner, Shakia T Hardy, Lawrence J Fine , Byron C Jaeger, Gregory Wozniak, Emily B Levitan , Lisandro D Colantonio. JAMA 2020 Sep 22;324(12)

Suggest to review that statement.

Reviewer #2: This is a well researched article that needs minor revision to make it more useful and easier reading for readers.

1. All abbreviations in the Abstract, Text and Legends should be preceded by full spelling. To make it easier for readers, a list of abbreviations should be added before the Introduction of the main text.

2. In calculating the average annual percent change (AAPC), the author assumes that the trend is consistent over the period studied, with a statistical calculation used to give the average rate. However as can be seen from Figure 1, there is no consistent trend over the period studied. For example, for newly diagnosed hypertension, the incidence dropped from 1999-2014, and then rose from 2014-2018. Authors therefore need to rewrite the section on "Trends in the prevalence of awareness, treatment, and control among hypertension", to apply AAPC selectively over specific periods or not to use it for certain parameters. It is very important not to over, under or incorrectly estimate consistencies in the trend.

3. Figure 1 is most important, and graphically represents what the whole article is about. It should be presented as 3 separate Figures.

**********

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

Reviewer #2: Yes: Hean Teik Ong

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Revision 1

Reviewer #1:

Regarding this statement in page 4

However, there is no estimation of the trends in the prevalence, awareness, treatment, and control of hypertension over a 20-years period in the US, and few studies have explored the factors influencing hypertension incidence, awareness, treatment, and control simultaneously.

There are 2 other articles that cover the same population over an almost similar period of time

1) Trends in the Prevalence, Awareness, Treatment, and Control of Hypertension among Young Adults in the United States, 1999–2014

Yiyi Zhang, and Andrew E Moran, MD. Hypertension. 2017 Oct; 70(4): 736–742.

2)Trends in Blood Pressure Control Among US Adults With Hypertension, 1999-2000 to 2017-2018

Paul Muntner, Shakia T Hardy, Lawrence J Fine , Byron C Jaeger, Gregory Wozniak, Emily B Levitan , Lisandro D Colantonio. JAMA 2020 Sep 22;324(12)

Suggest to review that statement.

Response : We have revised this statement and cited the two reference in the introduction section.

Reviewer #2:

This is a well researched article that needs minor revision to make it more useful and easier reading for readers.

1. All abbreviations in the Abstract, Text and Legends should be preceded by full spelling. To make it easier for readers, a list of abbreviations should be added before the Introduction of the main text.

Response 1: We have added full spelling about the abbreviations in the Abstract, Text and Legends. A list of abbreviations was added before the Introduction of the main text.

2. In calculating the average annual percent change (AAPC), the author assumes that the trend is consistent over the period studied, with a statistical calculation used to give the average rate. However as can be seen from Figure 1, there is no consistent trend over the period studied. For example, for newly diagnosed hypertension, the incidence dropped from 1999-2014, and then rose from 2014-2018. Authors therefore need to rewrite the section on "Trends in the prevalence of awareness, treatment, and control among hypertension", to apply AAPC selectively over specific periods or not to use it for certain parameters. It is very important not to over, under or incorrectly estimate consistencies in the trend.

Response 2: We used annual percent change (APC) to evaluate the internal trend of each independent interval before and after inflection (Line 166-178), and rewrite the section on "Trends in the prevalence of awareness, treatment, and control among hypertension"(Line 208-211, 233-239, 252-259).

3. Figure 1 is most important, and graphically represents what the whole article is about. It should be presented as 3 separate Figures.

Response 3: We have separated into 3 Figures.

Attachments
Attachment
Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx
Decision Letter - Hean Teik Ong, Editor

Trends and Influence Factors in the Prevalence, Awareness, Treatment, and Control of Hypertension among US Adults from 1999 to 2018

PONE-D-23-23791R1

Dear Dr. Chaojun Yang,

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,

Hean Teik Ong

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

**********

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

Reviewer #1: I Don't Know

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: 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: Yes

**********

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: This is a well written article. The trends and factors influencing prevalence, awareness, treatment

and control of hypertension were well analysed.

Reviewer #2: This is a revised manuscript, that is well written, with initial comments posing 2 questions asking for minor revisions. The reviewer comments have been adequately addressed and necessary revisions have been done. The article can be 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: Yes: Liew Yew Fong

Reviewer #2: Yes: Hean Teik Ong

**********

Formally Accepted
Acceptance Letter - Hean Teik Ong, Editor

PONE-D-23-23791R1

Trends and Influence Factors in the Prevalence, Awareness, Treatment, and Control of Hypertension among US Adults from 1999 to 2018

Dear Dr. Yang:

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. Hean Teik Ong

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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