A Focus on the Pharmacotherapy of Obesity

The prevalence of obesity is rising worldwide (1), and obesity was found to affect 42% of U.S. adults in the 2017-2018 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, with an additional 31% having overweight (2).As a chronic disease, obesity is associated with common complications and related diseases that are responsible for extensive morbidity and mortality, including type 2 diabetes, hypertension, dyslipidemia, obstructive sleep apnea, osteoarthritis, cardiovascular disease, and cancer (3).The social costs of obesity are also immense.Obesity and complications attributable to obesity account for 47.1% of the total direct and indirect costs of chronic diseases nationwide in the United States (4).