In Response:

We thank Drs. Khazaei, Karami, and Veisani for their interest in our research. We will address their questions and comments in the order presented in the letter to the editor.

Our study included five electronic databases: PubMed, Cochrane Library, LILACS, BIREME, and SciELO. Unfortunately, we cannot include all electronic databases, but we appreciate the suggestion and will use Web of Science in future studies. If Drs. Khazaei, Karami, and Veisani have found any additional studies that may be included in our meta-analysis (according to our inclusion criteria), please inform us. We intend to increase the number of studies and the analytical power in our next meta-analysis.

In our meta-analysis, we included only randomized controlled trials (RCT), prehypertensive, and hypertensive subjects, and the practice of isotonic resistance training alone. These inclusion criteria considerably increase the quality of the articles but decrease the number of included studies compared with other meta-analyses [1, 2] on this topic.

Finally, our meta-analysis was reported in accordance with the recommendations and criteria outlined in the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analysis (PRISMA) statement. The two reviewers independently evaluated the full-text articles and performed data extraction. In addition, the heterogeneity was adequate, with I2: 22.5% and a P-value for heterogeneity = 0.271 for systolic blood pressure, and I2: 46.5% and a P-value for heterogeneity = 0.113 for diastolic blood pressure.

We thank Drs. Khazaei, Karami, and Veisani for their interest in our study and hope we have addressed their concerns. As before, we propose to update our meta-analysis by adding new studies.