[Past, present and future of obesity pharmacotherapy]. / Minulost', prítomnost' a budúnost' farmakoterapie obezity.

Obese (BMI > or = 30 kg/m2) and overweight (BMI > or = 25 and < 30 kg/m2) individuals are at high risk of developing serious chronic health problems, including type 2 diabetes, hypertension, dyslipidemia, and cardiovascular disease. Caloric restriction, increased physical activity and behavioral therapy remain the primary treatment options for the management of body weight in these individuals. When a weight loss of 5-10% cannot be achieved in 3-6 months by lifestyle changes drug therapy might be indicated. This review will provide a brief history of obesity pharmacotherapy, discuss the status of currently available obesity drugs and outline the future drug development. A medical need exists for the development of novel weight loss therapies or combinations of known therapies.

Familial defective apolipoprotein B-100 in Slovakia: are differences in prevalence of familial defective apolipoprotein B-100 explained by ethnicity?

The objective of this study was to examine frequency of familial defective apo-B-100 (FDB, R3500Q mutation) in probands with the phenotype of familial hypercholesterolemia (FH) and in the general population of 40-year-old subjects in Slovakia and to characterize their lipid and clinical criteria and to compare the frequency of FDB with other populations. We identified 35 patients with FDB among 362 probands with clinical diagnosis of FH and two cases of FDB in the 40-year-old cohort of 2323 subjects from general Slovak population. Probands with FDB differed from those with FH only in plasma triglyceride concentrations (1.84+/-1.4 mmol/l versus 1.45+/-0.98 mmol/l, respectively, p<0.01). Evaluation of personal history of premature atherosclerosis did not show any differences (11.4% in FDB versus 20% in FH, p<0.16). The FDB patients had similar manifestation of xanthomatosis as the FH patients (17.1% versus 8.25%, p<0.25). The frequency of FDB of 9.7% found in the FH patients is among the highest of those reported to date. The frequency of R3500Q mutation of 0.09% found in Slovak 40-year-old subjects did not differ significantly from published population molecular data. Our comparison of estimated FDB frequencies with those which were found by DNA analysis demonstrated that estimated frequencies were not only wider in range, but also significantly higher than those which were assessed by the analysis. The definitive answer to the prevalence of FDB and its biochemical and clinical characteristics requires screening of unbiased samples of the general population from different ethnic groups based on molecular genetic methods.