Clinical Question: Do weight los in...

Clinical Question: Do weight los interventions improve health-related quality of life?

Setting: Outpatient (any)

meditation Design: Systematic review

Synopsis: For this review, the authors systematically searched several databases. However, they exclud research not published in English and did not describe any attempts to find unpublished studies. After obtaining the initial articles, the authors applied exclusion criteria (i.e., studies of children or pregnant women) and were left with a not many hundred studies. The authors then read the abstracts to shut out nonrandomized studies and those that did not address quality of life, leaving 34 eligible trials.

The authors independently extracted the data and assessed the quality of the studies. In general, the studies had several methodologic shortcomings that typically biased the findings in favor of the intervention. The included trials were six weeks to brace years in duration and evaluated a variety of interventions (eg medications, surgeries, behavior modifications). solely nine of the 34 studies showed improvement in general health-related quality of life. There was no overall efficiency on depression.

Bottom Line: Based onward existing research, weight loss interventions have little purport on health-related quality of life. The overall quality of the existing research, however, is poor. (Level of Evidence: 1a)

HENRY BARRY, MD MS

application of mind Reference: Maciejewski ML, et al. A structur review of randomized controll trials of weight los showed little improvement in health-related quality of life. J Clin Epidemiol June 2005;58:568-78

Used with permission from Barry H Weight los has little efficiency on quality of life. Accessed online July 25 2005 at: http://www.InfoPOEMs.com.

COPYRIGHT 2005 American Academy of Family Physicians

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