About the Authors

C Raina Elley

c.elley@auckland.ac.nz

Affiliation School of Population Health, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

Ajay K. Gupta

Affiliation International Centre for Circulatory Health, Imperial College, London, United Kingdom

Ruth Webster

Affiliation The George Institute for Global Health, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia

Vanessa Selak

Affiliation School of Population Health, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

Min Jun

Affiliation The George Institute for Global Health, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia

Anushka Patel

Affiliation The George Institute for Global Health, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia

Anthony Rodgers

Affiliation The George Institute for Global Health, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia

Simon Thom

Affiliation International Centre for Circulatory Health, Imperial College, London, United Kingdom

Competing Interests

The authors have read the journal's policy and have the following conflicts: AR and RW have received a grant from Dr Reddy's Ltd (DRL) for the SPACE collaboration centre but this is unrelated to the current meta-analysis. DRL also provided a fixed dose combination formulation free of charge for four randomized controlled trials to assess the effectiveness of a “polypill-based strategy.” CRE, VS, AP, ST and AR are investigators or are on the steering committee of at least one of these trials. The George Institute for Global Health is now negotiating a global license for these products, following a decision by DRL not to proceed with taking the products to market because of existing regulatory requirements. DRL has provided travel assistance to meetings on “polypills” for CRE, RW, VS, AP, ST and AR in the past. AKG has received travel assistance to attend a conference from Pfizer. This does not alter the authors' adherence to all the PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: CRE AKG RW VS MJ AP AR ST. Performed the experiments: CRE AKG VS. Analyzed the data: CRE AKG VS. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: CRE AKG VS. Wrote the paper: CRE AKG RW VS MJ AP AR ST. Contributed to literature search strategy: RW MJ. Critically appraised analyses:W MJ AP AR ST. Contributed to interpretation of results: RW MJ AP AR ST.