Obesity is a major and growing threat to good health to most parts of the world. In the United States, Xenical, marketed over the counter as Alli, is the only drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration for long-term use for weight control. There are several others—Qsymia, Contrave, Belviq, Saxenda—that are approved for short-term use. A number of others, approved earlier, have been withdrawn from the market for patient safety reasons, including the popular combination known as phen-fen. The pharmaceutical industry has found the discovery of effective and safe weight control drugs to be a formidable challenge. Xenical (tetrahydrolipstatin) is an inhibitor of an enzyme in the gut that promotes the digestion of fats. As a result, an increased fraction of ingested fat is excreted in the feces rather than being absorbed in the body, a reduction in effective calorie intake. This is a novel weight control mechanism of action. Other agents act to suppress appetite or as stimulants to calorie burning. Dietary measures to control weight take several forms, but the effective measure is calorie intake, not diet composition. The field of weight control is rife with false and unsubstantiated claims of efficacy. Research to find better drugs for weight control continues.
Feasibility of a virtual reality-based approach to improve behavioral weight management outcomes