Unambiguous Identification of Obesity Trials

Abstract

Comments on an article, 'The FDA’s assessment of two drugs for chronic weight management' by E. Colman et al. (2012). Colman et al. describe trial results underlying approval of two weight-management drugs by the Food and Drug Administration. However, their table included noninformative terms (e.g., 'study 1') without citing publications or ClinicalTrials.gov records. The materials that were referenced used only acronyms (e.g., BLOOM) and internal identifiers (e.g., OB-301) — neither of which could be linked to the terms in the table. Using ClinicalTrials.gov (www.clinicaltrials.gov), we identified six studies of lorcaserin for obesity and nine studies of phentermine and topiramate for obesity. Only Colman et al. could confirm the likely matches. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)