Background: Obesity, a modern worldwide epidemic, not only has a great negative impact on people's health and quality of life but also causes a serious economic burden. The treatment of obesity involves several facets, including lifestyle changes, bariatric surgery, and pharmacotherapy. Due to the limitations of other treatments, pharmacotherapy is necessary as an adjuvant in the treatment of obesity. Five anti-obesity drugs have now been approved by US FDA: orlistat, phentermine plus topiramate, lorcaserin, naltrexone plus bupropion, and liraglutide. According to our knowledge, several clinical practice guidelines(CPGs) about pharmacotherapy for obesity have been published, yet the quality of the CPGs is mixed. As so far, there are few studies systematically assessing the consistency of recommendations, methodological quality, and reporting quality about CPGs in pharmacotherapy for obesity.
Objective: We aim to systematically review the existing guidelines on pharmacotherapy for obesity and assess the consistency of their recommendations, methodological quality and reporting quality.
Methods: The clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) in PubMed, EMBASE, Web of Science, CBM and four main guideline databases about pharmacotherapy for obesity have been searched. All searches were performed on 5 August 2019. Inclusion criteria are as follows: (1) published guidelines on overweight, obesity or weight loss. (2) CPGs reported recommendations on pharmacotherapy for obesity. (3) The language of publication is English. According to the eligibility criteria, two reviewers screened titles and abstracts of all the retrieved bibliographic records independently, then we were further evaluated the text in full for any potentially eligible studies. Due to the mature research in this field and the number of guidelines, only the guidelines are included, not consensus, statements, and recommendations. The AGREE II instrument will be used to appraise methodological quality included in the guidelines, which comprises 23 key items organized within six domains and the RIGHT checklist will be used to evaluate the quality of reports included in the guidelines, which consists of 22 items by four reviewers. Then, Descriptive statistics will be used to summarize the general characteristics, evidence source information, and details of the recommendations of the guidelines. The interclass correlation coefficient (ICC) with 95% CIs will be used to measure the agreement among the four reviewers. The ICC scores will be ranked into five groups: minor(0.01-0.20), fair(0.21-0.40), moderate(0.41-0.60), substantial(0.61-0.80), very good(0.81-1.00). Using SPSS version19.0 to conduct all the analyses.
Results: This study is ongoing and results will be presented at Cochrane Colloquium as available.
Conclusions: This study is ongoing and results will be presented at Cochrane Colloquium as available.
Patient or healthcare consumer involvement: No applicable.