Archive

The costs of obesity and its related comorbidities to healthcare systems are well known, yet the effects on obese people individually are equally devastating. Obesity is now seen in people of all ages, even children, and it has widespread effects on physical health, reproductive health, employment, mental health, stigma and mortality risk. These effects are described in this article, and the urgent need to begin tackling the condition in primary care is highlighted.

In this regular section, Matt Capehorn picks out recent key papers published in the area of obesity. To compile the digest, a PubMed search was performed for the 3 months ending January 2015 using a range of search terms relating to obesity. Articles have been chosen on the basis of their potential interest to healthcare professionals and are rated according to readability, applicability to practice and originality.