Online platform for healthy weight loss in adults with overweight and obesity - the “POEmaS” project: a randomized controlled trial

Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.Background Obesity is a major health problem in Brazil affecting 19% of Brazilian adults with a rising incidence over the last 10 years. Moreover, low fruit/vegetables consumption and high sweetened beverage intake are major issues. Facing the challenge of universal healthcare access, internet-based programs have the potential to reach a large number of inhabitants, be widely accessible and cost effective. Our aim is to assess the efficacy of a web-based platform to promote weight loss and diet and physical activity habits change in a Brazilian adult population. Methods We designed a three-arm parallel randomized controlled trial including 18–60 years university students or employees with 25 kg/m2 minimum body mass index (BMI). Pregnancy, conditions with specific dietary requirements and participation in other weight loss programs are exclusion criteria. Participants are allocated to one of three groups: (1) waitlist with minimal intervention, (2) web-based platform, (3) web-based platform plus online dietician assistance. Assessors are blinded. Weight and BMI loss are the primary outcomes. Diet and physical activity behaviours, health perception and online activity features are secondary outcomes. The intervention comprises recommendations of diet and physical activity habits tailored to the Brazilian population and principles of behaviour change. The web-based platform has online social network and gamification features. Analysis will be on an intention-to-treat basis at 12 and 24 weeks after baseline. Differences in weight loss between groups will be performed by analysis of covariate. Linear regression will be used to assess whether treatment group allocation is an independent predictor of weight loss. The study was approved by the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) Ethics Research Committee. All participants signed an informed consent form prior to recruitment. Discussion We present the study protocol of a three arm parallel randomized controlled trial which aims to test the efficacy of an online platform to promote weight loss for adults with overweight and obesity. We anticipate that the adoption of healthy lifestyle habits and weight loss will be more important in participants randomized to the online platform group.This study was supported with grants from the National Institute of Science and Technology for Health Technology Assessment (IATS) – CNPq/Brazil. AM Beleigoli was supported by Prêmio CAPES de Teses. AL Ribeiro was supported by CNPq (research fellowship number 310679/2016 – 8) and FAPEMIG (PPM-00428-17)