Are We Fighting a Losing Battle Against Obesity

Copyright: © 2012 Yin J, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Obesity is defined as a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or greater. The worldwide prevalence of obesity is rising at an alarming rate. In the USA, 17.1% of children and adolescents are overweight and 32.2% of adults are obese; obesity and its co-morbidity lead to over 400,000 deaths and cost more than $150 billion per year [1-3]. The prevalence and trends in obesity in other developed countries are similar to those in the USA. Globally, there are at least 300 million obese adults. Effective treatment options are limited. With diet, about 50% of patients regain weight within one year and almost all patients regain weight within 5 years [4]. The outcome of the medical treatment is not promising due to either adverse effects or lack of long-term efficacy [5-9]. Surgical treatment is the only long-lasting effective therapy; however, it is typically reserved for patients with morbid obesity due to involved surgical risks and complications [10]. Since it is irreversible, surgical treatment causes a big problem to non-responders.