The Endocrine Society has issued a Clinical Practice Guideline (CPG) on strategies for prescribing drugs to manage obesity and promote weight loss.
The CPG, entitled "Pharmacological Management of Obesity: An Endocrine Society Clinical Practice Guideline," was published online and will appear in the February 2015 print issue of the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism (JCEM), a publication of the Endocrine Society.
Obesity is a worsening public health problem. According to the 2012 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, about 33.9 percent of adults ages 19-79 were overweight, 35.1 percent were obese and 6.4 were extremely obese.
The Food and Drug Administration has approved four new anti-obesity drugs -- lorcaserin, phentermine/topiramate, naltrexone/bupropion and liraglutide -- in the past two years. Medications like these can be used in combination with diet and exercise to help people lose weight.
"Lifestyle changes should always be a central part of any weight loss strategy," said Caroline M. Apovian, MD, of Boston University School of Medicine and Boston Medical Center, and chair of the task force that authored the guideline. "Medications do not work by themselves, but they can help people maintain a healthy diet by reducing the appetite. Adding a medication to a lifestyle modification program is likely to result in greater weight loss."
In the CPG, the Endocrine Society recommends that diet, exercise and behavioral modifications be part of all obesity management approaches. Other tools such as weight loss medications and bariatric surgery can be combined with behavioral changes to reduce food intake and increase physical activity. Patients who have been unable to successfully lose weight and maintain a goal weight may be candidates for prescription medication if they meet the criteria on the drug's label.
Other recommendations from the CPG include:
The Hormone Health Network offers resources on weight and health at http://www.hormone.org/diseases-and-conditions/weight-and-health.
Other members of the Endocrine Society task force that developed this CPG include: Louis J. Aronne of Weill-Cornell Medical College in New York, NY; Daniel H. Bessesen of Denver Health Medical Center in Denver, CO; Marie E. McDonnell of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, MA; Mohammad Hassan Murad of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN; Uberto Pagotto of Alma Mater University of Bologna in Bologna, Italy; Donna H. Ryan of Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, LA; and Christopher D. Still of Geisinger Health Care System in Danville, PA.
The Society established the CPG Program to provide endocrinologists and other clinicians with evidence-based recommendations in the diagnosis and treatment of endocrine-related conditions. Each CPG is created by a task force of topic-related experts in the field. Task forces rely on scientific reviews of the literature in the development of CPG recommendations. The Endocrine Society does not solicit or accept corporate support for its CPGs. All CPGs are supported entirely by Society funds.
The CPG was co-sponsored by the European Society of Endocrinology and The Obesity Society.
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