Unanswered questions about the causes of obesity: Obesity is now a global pandemic, but there is little consensus about the causes.

John R. Speakman; Thorkild I.A. Sørensen; Kevin D. Hall; David B. Allison

doi:10.1126/science.adg2718

Unanswered questions about the causes of obesity: Obesity is now a global pandemic, but there is little consensus about the causes.

John R. Speakman
, Thorkild I.A. Sørensen
, Kevin D. Hall
, David B. Allison

Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology
CAS - Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology
China Medical University
University of Copenhagen
Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research
National Institutes of Health
Indiana University Bloomington

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

30 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Obesity is a major health issue that has reached pandemic status with no clear solutions. Much has been learned over the past 50 years about the regulation of body fat. Examples include the discovery of the hormone leptin, finding thermogenic brown adipose tissue in adult humans, elucidating pathways in the brain that affect hunger and feeding behavior, quantifying adipocyte turnover and the lipids therein, identifying single genes that produce rare but severe obesity, and finding thousands of genetic variants associated with individual differences in body mass index (BMI). Despite this progress, there remain several key questions to be answered to aid the prevention and treatment of obesity.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	944-946
Number of pages	3
Journal	Science (New York, N.Y.)
Volume	381
Issue number	6661
Early online date	31 Aug 2023
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adg2718
Publication status	Published - 1 Sept 2023

Bibliographical note

Acknowledgments
The authors thank the Royal Society for supporting the scientific meeting in October 2022 about Causes of obesity: Theories, conjectures and evidence, which was the inspiration for this Perspective.

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

SDG 3 Good Health and Well-being

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10.1126/science.adg2718Licence: Unspecified

Cite this

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Unanswered questions about the causes of obesity: Obesity is now a global pandemic, but there is little consensus about the causes.

Abstract

Bibliographical note

UN SDGs

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