Handbook of Obesity - Volume 1: Epidemiology, Etiology, and Physiopathology PDF

Preface

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. In brief, Volume 1

covers the epidemiology, etiology, and physiopathology of obesity and Volume 2 covers the clinical applications associated with translation of basic science into treatment strategies for obesity. With these two volumes, we believe that the reader has access to the latest research and clinical practice in the field. We are indebted to the authors for maintaining a tight writing schedule so that all chapters would appear in a reasonably short time after submission. We also want to thank Robin Post and Allison Templet for their hard work on the editorial side of this publication. They have facilitated the rapid accretion of chapters and turnaround of the edited papers so that they could get into line for publication. We also thank the publisher, especially Claire Bonnett, senior editor at CRC Press, for helping us move this book from manuscript to the published Handbook of Obesity rapidly.