Obesity: A chronic disease in need of drug targets and safe medicines.
Extract: Over the past two decades, urbanization has prompted the availability of an abundance of high caloric foods and has promoted increasingly more sedentary lifestyles, resulting in the rise of obesity as the most common nutritional disorder in the urbanized world. Presently, the majority of people in the United States are considered overweight or obese, making obesity and its complications a major health concern. Consequently, the World Health Organization (WHO) has identified obesity as a major chronic disease, now emerging as a pandemic. Today, there are over one billion overweight people worldwide, 300 million of which are obese. At present rates, the number of obese people is expected to double by 2025 (WHO). In addition to adult obesity, adolescent or childhood obesity has doubled in the past 10 years, with a corresponding doubling of adolescent type 2 diabetes (T2D). The prevalence of obesity in children is on the rise in most urbanized populations, which will impact obesity-associated morbidity and mortality even more in the decades to come.
Seman
Leo
L
Department of Metabolic Disorders Research and Clinical Investigations, The Bayer Research Center, West Haven, CT 06516, USA.
Burn
Alex S
AS
Burn
Paul
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