HANDBOOK OF OBESITY

It has been 15 years since the first edition of the Handbook of
Obesity was published, and these years have seen enormous
progress in our understanding of the etiology and the causes
of obesity as well as innovative approaches to its treatment.
We are thus pleased to publish this update of the Handbook
of Obesity in the form of two coordinated and comprehensive
volumes. Shortly after the first edition, translational research
took hold and it became evident that the “therapeutic”
strategies for treatment of obesity would need more space,
and this was accomplished by splitting the second edition
into two volumes; subsequently, the therapeutic volume was
updated and published separately without the basic science
volume. By 2012, the growth of the science underlying the
increase in the prevalence of obesity and the emphasis on
translation research led to the need for a new edition of each
volume with many new authors and entirely new content.
For instance, many drugs that were available in 1998 are no
longer available now, and new ones have come on the market.