FDA-Approved Pharmacotherapy for Weight Loss Over the Last Decade

Obesity is a recently defined illness whose diagnosis and treatment continue to be stigmatized. Currently, due to lifestyle changes brought on by technological advancements and the wide availability and affordability of high-calorie foods, millions of people around the world suffer from obesity and/or its sequelae. Finding adequate prevention and treatment options would therefore lead to massive improvements in the duration and quality of life of affected individuals. In this review, we searched the PubMed database for studies exploring the safety and efficacy of the five medications currently approved by the FDA for the treatment of obesity. We included only studies pertaining to adult patients that have been published between 2012 and 2022. We found evidence that all the drugs analyzed such as orlistat, phentermine/topiramate, naltrexone/bupropion, liraglutide, and semaglutide appear to be effective in inducing weight loss, with the suggestion that semaglutide may have superior efficacy. However, a massive obstacle in developing treatment guidelines remains the lack of prolonged studies monitoring the long-term safety and efficacy of obesity medications. Nevertheless, in patients at risk of complications from obesity, the benefits of losing fat mass may outweigh the potential side effects associated with these medications and clinicians should prescribe whichever of the FDA-approved pharmacotherapy they deem most appropriate for the patient’s specific set of circumstances.