Observational-Epidemiological study on the use of drugs to treat obesity: A Brazilian profile of 520 answers

Abstract

In a modern world, where day-to-day worry and stress prevails, along with an ever-increasing workday, care with diet is often overlooked and, combined with a sedentary lifestyle, increases obesity rates in all the world. The purpose of this work is to analyze society's view about the treatment of obesity with medications, comparing it with the treatment of other diseases, such as high blood pressure and diabetes. Through a questionnaire, on the internet, carried out from July to September 2020, with 14 multiple-choice questions answered by 520 people, 91.7% of the participants answered that obesity is a disease, however, 47.3% of people still think that the use of drugs for their treatment is not necessary and only 37.7% believe in the effectiveness of such a method. In addition, 26.2% believe that all obese people eat a high amount of food and practice little physical activity. As for the comparison with other diseases, 33.3% of the respondents believe that diabetes should be treated with medication and obesity should not, and 32.3% believe that hypertension should use this method and obesity should not. With such results, it was concluded that the society's view is still quite stigmatized regarding the treatment of obesity by drugs, which implies prejudice and the difficulty in adhering to this method by obese people and, with this, is the difficulty in reducing the rates obesity and all comorbidities related to it.