Pharmacotherapy in Pediatric Obesity: Current Status and Future Prospects

Abstract

As obesity is principally a biologically mediated disease, biologically based interventions are often needed to counter the compensatory biological adaptations designed to maintain body weight at high levels. Pharmacotherapy can serve as an adjunctive treatment to lifestyle modification in some children and adolescents with obesity, especially those with severe forms of the disease and/or comorbidities. Despite the increasing number of anti-obesity drugs recently approved for the treatment of obesity in adults, few medications have been evaluated in terms of safety and efficacy in pediatric obesity. This mini review aims to provide some principles for the use of pharmacotherapy in pediatric obesity, summarizes results of some of the most important clinical trials on approved and “off-label” obesity medications and discusses some new options for the future of research on this field.