Correcting calculation and data errors reveals that the original conclusions were incorrect in “The best drug supplement for obesity treatment: a systematic review and network meta-analysis”

Abstract

Abstract The goal of this study was to reproduce and evaluate the reliability of the network meta-analysis performed in the article “The best drug supplement for obesity treatment: A systematic review and network meta-analysis” by Salari et al. In recent years, it has become more common to employ network meta-analysis to assess the relative efficacy of treatments often used in clinical practice. To duplicate Salari et al.‘s research, we pulled data directly from the original trials and used Cohen’s D to determine the effect size for each treatment. We reanalyzed the data since we discovered significant differences between the data we retrieved and the data given by Salari et al. We present new effect size estimates for each therapy and conclude that the prior findings were somewhat erroneous. Our findings highlight the importance of ensuring the accuracy of network meta-analyses to determine the quality and strength of existing evidence.

Keywords

• Network meta-analysis
• Drug supplement
• Obesity treatment
• Rigor
• Reproducibility