The next generation of obesity treatments: beyond suppressing appetite

Obesity remains a prominent public health concern in the United States as well as many other countries, with 33% of adults worldwide overweight or obese in 2005 and an estimated 60% by 2030 (Kelly et al., 2008). This data highlights the need for effective prevention and intervention strategies. Obesity can be viewed as an endpoint with many possible contributing factors, including genetic propensity, sedentary lifestyles, and the relative ease with which one can obtain food, particularly in modern industrialized societies. Such factors may result in an imbalance between the number of calories consumed vs. expended. The majority of pharmaceutical compounds that have been developed to combat obesity aim to correct or improve this last factor by suppressing appetite (See Table 1). However, the number of people with obesity in the United States does not appear to be decreasing (Flegal et al., 2012). Here we present some possible reasons why these drugs have failed to fully address the problem of obesity. © 2013 Avena, Murray and Gold.