Obesity - a chronic disease requiring treatment

Abstract

The globally increasing prevalence of obesity represents a key medical and socioeconomic challenge. Due to related comorbidities and complications such as arterial hypertension, diabetes mellitus, fatty liver disease, and arteriosclerosis, obesity leads to a significant statistical reduction in lifespan. Currently, bariatric surgery is the most effective approach to manage body weight and comorbidities while lifestyle intervention as basic obesity therapy and medical treatment often do not lead to sufficient and sustainable weight loss. However, recent medical approaches show now promising effects on weight control and might close the gap towards bariatric surgical procedures. For instance, semaglutide has been approved by EMA in January 2022 for medical treatment of obesity concomitant to basic lifestyle therapy in adults with a BMI of ≥ 30 kg/m2 or ≥ 27 kg/m2 and weight-related comorbidity. Apart from weight control, improvement in cardiometabolic risk factors can be achieved with this treatment. Moreover, other drugs, mostly based on incretin mono- or multiagonism, are currently developed and may open further effective treatment options for obesity and its complications in the near future.On a health political level, first steps for the development of a structured treatment program (DMP) for obesity are in progress to enable early guideline-based and structured treatment of obesity, and to prevent the obesity associated complications.