Model for Predicting the Effect of Sibutramine Therapy in Obesity

Background: The development of models predicting response to weight loss therapy using sibutramine is found in only a few cases. The objective of the work is to develop a data-driven method of personalized recommendation for obesity treatment that would predict the response to sibutramine based on the current set of patient parameters. Methods: The decision system is built on the XGBoost classification algorithm along with recursive feature selection and Shapley data valuation. Using the results of clinical trials, it was trained to estimate the probability of overcoming a weight loss threshold. The model was evaluated by the accuracy metric using the Leave-One-Out cross-validation. Results: The model for predicting response to sibutramine treatment over 3 months has an accuracy of 71%. The model for predicting outcomes at the sixth month visit based on results at 3 months has an accuracy of 80%. Conclusions: Although our developed prediction model may not exhibit high precision compared to certain benchmarks, it significantly outperforms random chance or models relying only on BMI parameters. Our model used the available range of laboratory tests, which makes it possible to use this model for routine clinical use and help doctors decide whether to prescribe sibutramine.