Scientists call for obesity to be renamed to improve treatment

Scientists are calling for obesity to be renamed to better help policymakers and the public understand and prevent the disease.

Researchers, including those from University College Cork in Ireland, said renaming would help avoid ongoing confusion about the term “obesity”, which currently can refer to the disease of obesity, a BMI range or a combination of the two.

Their new study, published recently in the journal Obesity Reviews, highlights the different or conflicting understandings of the term “obesity”.

Scientists called for reconsidering whether the term conveys the reality of the complex disease which centres on environmental, genetic, physiological, behavioural as well as developmental factors, and not on body weight or BMI.

While appetite-control medications like Ozempic (Semaglutide) are generating phenomenal demand worldwide, researchers said patients with obesity may be sent to the “back of the queue” based on the mistaken assumption that they do not need such drugs as those with diabetes.

A clearer terminology for the condition could play a better role in addressing this inequity, they said.

“Our focus should be on the underlying pathophysiology and not on body size. For people with the disease of obesity, treatment is not optional or cosmetic,” study co-author Margaret Steele said.

“A different diagnostic term such as ‘adiposity-based chronic disease’ could more clearly convey the nature of this disease, and avoid the confusion and stigma that may occur if we keep using the term ‘obesity’, which has become synonymous with body size,” Dr Steele said.

Adequately addressing the disease, according to scientists, requires distinguishing it clearly and unambiguously from high BMI.

While obesity as understood in clinical medicine meets the criteria to be considered a disease, its definition by BMI does not.

Some experts said recent guidance warning doctors against using Ozempic for obesity could also be problematic.

“Semaglutide is approved as a treatment for obesity, just as it is for diabetes. There is a deeply stigmatising idea out there that people with obesity are looking for an easy way out, that these medicines provide a low-effort alternative to healthy diet and lifestyle,” said Francis Finucane, another author of the study.

“But for people living with the disease of obesity, these drugs don’t make behavioural change unnecessary, nor do they make it easy – they just make it possible,” Dr Finucane said.

This is different from celebrities using drugs like Semaglutide to become “fashionably” thin.

“This is why we need to clarify what we mean by obesity. Many of the people we see on TikTok or Instagram reporting on their semaglutide journeys do not have the disease of obesity,” Dr Steele explained.

“When we talk about treating and preventing obesity, our focus should be on healthy food environments, and appropriate treatment for people living with chronic metabolic diseases.”