With two-thirds of the national adult population and more than a third of children and adolescents defined as overweight or obese, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been under mounting pressure to approve new weight-loss drugs. On July 17, the second new anti-obesity pill, extended-release phentermine and topiramate, received market approval on the heels of lorcaserin (approved on June 27). It has been 13 years since the last approval of long-term weight-loss drug orlistat. Safety concerns or lack of efficacy have doomed past applications. The American Society of Bariatric Physicians and the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery applauded the FDA's approval of the new drugs and claimed that the tide was turning in the efforts to address the US obesity epidemic. But will these new drugs really make a substantial dent in the burden of obesity in the USA?
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