Obesity is now a recognised disease in America

So ruled the American equivalent of our national medical association, the AMA (American Medical Association): from now on, obesity must be recognised and approached as a fully fledged disease, no longer as a mere risk factor for other ensuing conditions.

This opens up a vast range of possibilities for intervention that had remained unexplored until now, because as long as obesity was not classed as a disease, treatments to combat it were rarely covered by American health insurers, and this strongly limited the large-scale spread of drugs and therapies.

The decision sought by the AMA will, from now on, allow access to anti-obesity therapies that have been approved by the Food&Drugs Administration.

In the article that appeared in Corriere della Sera on 20 June, the news is read as a concrete opportunity to generate development and innovation in the pharmaceutical field, because with a potential market of over 90 million people in the United States alone, the development of new therapies will represent an opportunity pharmaceutical companies cannot afford to miss.

There are two risks that appear inherent in this development concerning obesity.
On the one hand, the fact that the development of new products may relax attention on the prevention front; on the other, the risk that the profitability of the potential market may induce improper commercial behaviour, already encountered in the anti-obesity pharmaceutical sector.

Prevention efforts in the form of public-service advertising and attention to unhealthy eating behaviours must therefore not falter, since instilling correct behaviours in terms of diet and physical activity guarantees benefits that no treatment at the level of the individual can ensure.

SOURCE Article: Corriere della Sera 20/06/2013