New Peptides as Potential Players in the Crosstalk Between the Brain and Obesity, Metabolic and Cardiovascular Diseases

Background While the rising pandemic of obesity has received significant attention in many countries, the effect of this attention on trends and the disease burden of obesity remains uncertain. Methods We analyzed data from 67.8 million individuals to assess the trends in obesity and overweight prevalence among children and adults between 1980 and 2015. Using the Global Burden of Disease study data and methods, we also quantified the burden of disease related to high body mass index (BMI), by age, sex, cause, and BMI level in 195 countries between 1990 and 2015. Results In 2015, obesity affected 107.7 million (98.7-118.4) children and 603.7 million (588.2- 619.8) adults worldwide. Obesity prevalence has doubled since 1980 in more than 70 countries and continuously increased in most other countries. Although the prevalence of obesity among children has been lower than adults, the rate of increase in childhood obesity in many countries was greater than the rate of increase in adult obesity. High BMI accounted for 4.0 million (2.7- 5.3) deaths globally, nearly 40% of which occurred among non-obese. More than two-thirds of deaths related to high BMI were due to cardiovascular disease. The disease burden of high BMI has increased since 1990; however, the rate of this increase has been attenuated due to decreases in underlying cardiovascular disease death rates. Conclusions The rapid increase in prevalence and disease burden of elevated BMI highlights the need for continued focus on surveillance of BMI and identification, implementation, and evaluation of evidence-based interventions to address this problem.

To estimate the overall prevalence and absolute burden of overweight and obesity in the world and in various regions in 2005 and to project the global burden in 2030. Pooling analysis. We identified sex- and age-specific prevalence of overweight and obesity in representative population samples from 106 countries, which cover approximately 88% of the world population, using MEDLINE and other computerized databases, supplemented by a manual search of references from retrieved articles. Sex- and age-specific prevalence of overweight and obesity were applied to the 2005 population to estimate the numbers of overweight and obese individuals in each country, each world region and the entire world. In addition, the prevalence, with and without adjusting for secular trends, were applied to the 2030 population projections to forecast the number of overweight and obese individuals in 2030. Overall, 23.2% (95% confidence interval 22.8-23.5%) of the world's adult population in 2005 was overweight (24.0% in men (23.4-24.5%) and 22.4% in women (21.9-22.9%)), and 9.8% (9.6-10.0%) was obese (7.7% in men (7.4-7.9%) and 11.9% in women (11.6-12.2%)). The estimated total numbers of overweight and obese adults in 2005 were 937 million (922-951 million) and 396 million (388-405 million), respectively. By 2030, the respective number of overweight and obese adults was projected to be 1.35 billion and 573 million individuals without adjusting for secular trends. If recent secular trends continue unabated, the absolute numbers were projected to total 2.16 billion overweight and 1.12 billion obese individuals. Overweight and obesity are important clinical and public health burdens worldwide. National programs for the prevention and treatment of overweight, obesity and related comorbidities and mortalities should be a public health priority.