A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis Protocol of Interventions for the Patient with Prediabetes Using Mobile Health Applications (Preprint)

Abstract

BACKGROUND Individuals in a prediabetic state are much more likely to develop Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM)—4 times more likely than those with normal glucose tolerance. Lifestyle changes such as daily physical activity and healthy diets can decrease the risk of a prediabetic state. Mobile application intervention could be one of the solutions to improve self-management awareness and compliance with prediabetic state intervention. There are only a few studies in systematic reviews of mobile phone application interventions to prevent prediabetes yet. OBJECTIVE As a result, the goal of this study was to collect and summarize evidence from randomized controlled trials (RCTs) investigating the efficacy of mobile phone applications for intervention in prediabetic patients METHODS This protocol was prepared in accordance with the preferred reporting items for systematic review and meta-analysis protocols (PRISMA-P) statement. The database that will be used includes Clinicaltrials.gov, the International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP), PubMed, ProQuest, and EBSCO with date restrictions between January 2007 and December 2022 in the English language only. Identification of articles will be done independently by three reviewers through the title of the articles, reviewing the abstract, and then the full-text article. Any disagreement will be resolved by consensus. The Cochrane tool will be used to assess the risk of bias. If the participants, interventions, comparisons, and outcomes are sufficiently similar, a meta-analysis will be performed. Extraction and content analysis will be performed systematically. Quantitative data will be presented graphically via forest plot with 95% confidence intervals. Where possible we will explore the heterogeneity and continue to conduct meta-analysis using the RevMan software package. RESULTS The proposed systematic review and meta-analyses will allow us to obtain the evidence exploring the effectiveness of mobile phone applications for intervention in prediabetic state patients. CONCLUSIONS Technologies (e.g., the internet, e-mail, and mobile phone applications) can provide practical, inexpensive, and scalable alternatives to traditional face-to-face procedures; this could also be applied to prediabetic patients in order to encourage lifestyle modification. CLINICALTRIAL This protocol has been registered in the Prospective Registry of Systematic Review (PROSPERO) database. The registration number is CRD42021243813