Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Feb 24, 2021
Date Accepted: Sep 23, 2021
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Efficacy of interventions incorporating mobile applications in facilitating weight loss and health behavior change in the Asian population: a systematic review and meta-analysis
ABSTRACT
Background:
Smartphone applications (apps) have shown potential in enhancing weight management in the Western population in the short to medium term. With a rapidly growing obesity burden in the Asian populations, researchers are turning to apps as a service delivery platform to reach a greater target audience to efficiently tackle the problem.
Objective:
This systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to determine the efficacy of interventions incorporating apps in facilitating weight loss and health behavior change in the Asian population.
Methods:
Six databases were searched in June 2020. Eligible studies were controlled trials utilizing an app in the intervention in participants aged 18 years or above and from an Asian ethnicity. A meta-analysis to test intervention efficacy, subgroup analyses and post-hoc analyses were conducted to determine the effects of adding app to usual care and study duration. The primary outcome was absolute or percentage weight change while secondary outcomes were changes to lifestyle behaviors.
Results:
A total of 21 studies were included in this review and 17 were selected for the meta-analysis. The pooled effect size across 14 randomized controlled trials for weight change was small to moderate (Hedges’ g = -0.28, 95% CI = -0.44 to -0.12) however, this was not representative of long-term studies (more than a year). Stand-alone app interventions were inefficacious for weight loss but supplementing multi-component usual care with an app led to statistically significant weight change (Hedges’ g = -0.25 95% CI = -0.43 to -0.07). Asian apps were largely culturally adapted and multi-functional, with the most common app features being communication with health professionals and self-monitoring of behaviors and outcomes.
Conclusions:
More evidence is required to determine the efficacy of apps in the long term and address app non-usage to maximize the potential of the intervention. Future research should determine the efficacy of each component of the multi-component intervention to facilitate study designs that are most effective and cost-efficient for weight management. Clinical Trial: PROSPERO REGISTRATION: CRD42020165240.
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.