Strengths and limitations
Our study was the first meta-analysis of the effect orlistat on serum
uric acid level and incorporated a sufficient number of RCT and
publication in our analysis. We had precise search strategy. We didn’t
find substantial heterogeneity in our analysis. However, some
limitations of the present study should be noted. First, the
characteristics of included study participants were heterogeneous (i.e.,
patients with hypercholesterolemia, T2 DM, metabolic syndrome, PCOS, and
NAFLD). In addition, the number of inclusion trials in some subgroups
was few, which might results in false negative results. Moreover, we
included articles only in English language and articles in other
languages may influence our results. What also is important to be noted
is that the included studies in our meta-analysis did not report their
results for men and women separately. Accordingly, we were not able to
compare the pooled effect size between men and women.