Treating obesity: is it all in the gut?

Obesity is a leading cause of preventable mortality worldwide, with current strategies for treatment including life-style changes, pharmacological intervention and bariatric surgery. With pharmacological intervention showing at best modest patient benefits, new treatments are required. Modulation of anorectic gut hormones could offer the potential to elicit the required life-changing level of efficacy only currently seen with bariatric surgery, and without the cardiovascular risk associated with a number of the current marketed therapies. This review will discuss the gut hormones glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1), Ghrelin and cholecystokinin (CCK)--for which more advanced non-peptide chemical matter has been discovered acting through these hormone pathways and/or their receptors.