Antiobesity Pharmacotherapy: Current Treatment Options and Future Perspectives

Abstract

This chapter provides a summary of historic perspectives and currently available pharmaceutical therapies for the treatment of obesity. An overview is provided on the pipeline of anti‐obesity drugs currently in development; with emphasis on the central mechanisms of these drug candidates. The obesity drug market has encountered frequent problems in the past with limited efficacy, toxicity, and strong resistance of the system to perturbation. These hurdles can be overcome in the future with progress in our understanding of the complicated and often redundant pathways that safeguards the energy metabolism for survival under both feast and famine conditions. To be ultimately successful, obesity treatments may require combination therapies that target both central and peripheral mechanisms as well as behavior modifications to achieve sustained weight loss effect.