Nordic Life Science 1
A paradigm shift and a narrative change BESIDES T
HE EXTRAORDINARY success of GLP-1 agonists, the recent groundbreaking developments within obesity treatment have also led to obesity being viewed as a chronic biological disease. T E X T B Y MA L I N O T MA N I T 30 | NORDICLIFESCIENCE.ORG HE WORLD OBESITY FEDERATION estimates that 1.1 billion people over the age of five are obese today, and 1.6 billion are overweight. The prevalence of obesity in the U.S. has grown from 30.5% in 1999– 2000 to 41.9% in the period of 2017–2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Obesity is also on the rise in the Nordic region with Finland in the lead. According to the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare, of young adults under 30, 19% of women and 17% of men are obese. In the adults-over-30 age group, 28% of women and 26% of men are obese. Almost one in two men and women have abdominal obesity. These extra kilos entail increased risk of severe health conditions like type 2 diabetes, heart diseases, and even certain cancers, and the global cost of treating obesity-related complications is expected to be USD 1.2 trillion by 2025. Up until recently the road to weight-loss for people suffering from obesity was long and hard, and often impossible. The pharmacological management of obesity has included amphetamines, thyroid hormones, dinitrophenol, and various drug combinations that were withdrawn due to serious adverse effects shortly after regulatory approval (Müller et al., Nature Review, 2021). Agents as diverse as mitochondrial uncouplers, sympathomimetics, serotonergic agonists, lipase inhibitors, cannabinoid receptor antagonists, and a growing family of gastrointestinal-derived peptides chemically optimized for pharmaceutical use have also been investigated. Many of these approaches, conclude Müller et al., have had a common inability to achieve placebo-adjusted mean weight loss greater than 10% of initial body weight when chronically OBESITY // INTRODUCTION