Endocrine Abstracts

In the prevalence of obesity has increased worldwide reaching 30% of the adult population in some countries. Direct and inferential evidences show that this excess of body fat is associated with adverse health consequences, and that even a modest 5 to 10% weight loss results in substantial improvement in health. Considering the limited efficacy of the so-called ‘life style’ interventions based on diet plus exercise in the obese subjects, and that bariatric surgery is indicated only for morbid obesity, it appears that drug therapy would be the only available method to tackle the problem at large scale. Until now, pharmacological obesity treatment options are limited, however, new anti-obesity drugs acting through the central nervous system pathways or the peripheral adiposity signals are under clinical development. One promising approach is the use of peptides that influence the peripheral satiety signals and brain–gut axis, like the GPL-1 analogs. However, considering that any anti-obesity drug may probably affect one or several of the systems that control food intake and energy expenditure, it is unlikely that a single pharmacological agent will be effective for a striking treatment of obesity. Thus, the future strategies to tackle obesity would need to take into account that an effective weight loss will most probably require a coadministration of medications that act through different mechanisms.