Study design: The protocol of the systematic review was drafted and uploaded to PROSPERO website. Once the protocol code was issued by PROSPERO (CRD42019111056) and is being reported based on the reporting guidance provided in the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Protocols (PRISMA P) statement(9).The methods and results will also be reported in according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta analyses (PRISMA) statement(10)
Criteria for considering studies for this review:
Types of studies: Human Quantitative studies evaluating the association of abdominal obesity phenotypes outcomes in adult will be included.
Types of participants: We will assess all studies whose targeting adult (>20 years old) of abdominal obese groups and evaluating the association of different abdominal obesity phenotypes (in compared by healthy non abdominal obese phenotype as reference group) with type 2 diabetes incident, cardiovascular event and all-cause mortality.
We will consider 4 groups as exposure (at least):
(i) Metabolically healthy abdominal obese (abdominal obese without metabolic syndrome)
(ii) Metabolically healthy non abdominal obese (non abdominal obese without metabolic syndrome)
(iii) Metabolically unhealthy abdominal obese (abdominal obese with metabolic syndrome)
(iv) Metabolically unhealthy non abdominal obese (non abdominal obese with metabolic syndrome)
Types of outcome measures: We will assess all studies that their main outcomes are incident type 2 diabetes mellitus, cardiovascular events (fetal or non-fetal) and /or all-cause mortality.
Search methods for identification of studies
Electronic searches
To access the studies conducted on Abdominal obesity phenotypes and its outcomes (risk of type 2 DM, Cardiovascular disease and all-cause Mortality), We will search PubMed/MEDLINE, EMBASE, Web of Science, Cochrane Library, and ProQuest (from inception onwards). Additional studies will be identified through manual searching of reference lists. The search will include a broad range of terms and keywords including “central adiposity”, “abdominal obesit*”, “Obesity, Abdominal”, “abdominal fat*”, “Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus”, “Cardiovascular Diseases”, mortalit*, “metabolically healthy”. To access all the relevant articles, the reference list of review articles and meta-analysis (backward searching), cited articles (forward searching) and papers that are introduced as “related articles” will be checked.
Data collection and analysis
Selection of studies
All the identified studies of different sources will be transferred to Endnote, systematically de
Duplicated, and create a merged library. Two reviewers will independently screen the titles and
abstracts according to a pre-defined inclusion criteria checklist and will exclude unrelated ones. In case of disagreement between the reviewers, the judgment of article inclusion in the study
will be made by a third person. The full texts will be read by the two individuals separately, and
the final decisions will be made based on the checklist of inclusion criteria. In this study, the search strategy and the screening and selection of the data will be based on the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses (PRISMA) guidelines.
Data extraction
An extraction form will be designed to collect information from each study that will include the following:
- Study characteristics: study design, year of publication, journal, and period of follow up
- Participant characteristics: sample size, age, gender, definition of abdominal obesity and metabolic syndrome
- Outcome results: main outcomes including incident of type 2 diabetes mellitus, risk of cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality.
Assessment of risk of bias in included studies
Appraisal of study quality
Two independent investigators will review study titles and abstracts, and studies that satisfied the inclusion criteria will be retrieved for full-text evaluation. Disagreements will be resolved by a third investigator. The full text of the eligible articles will be assessed by two independent project collaborators. The two researchers also will be assessed the quality of the articles independently based on CASP.
Data synthesis
The information for each study (e.g. study characteristics, participants, outcomes and findings) will be used to build evidence tables of an overall description of included studies.
Additional analyses
If studies are sufficient and all data are available, sources of heterogeneity of studies will be investigated further by subgroup or meta-regression analysis. We will use the Cochran Q test to evaluate heterogeneity between studies and consider a threshold P value less than 0.05 as statistically significant. We intend to do analysis, if possible, based on age, sex, quality of the article ( low, moderate or high risk of bias) and length of follow up. We will also plan to evaluate the magnitude of the heterogeneity between studies by the I² testing. If quantitative synthesis is not appropriate, the findings of articles will be discussed and the conclusion will depend on the power and strength of each study.