Toward Repurposing a Commonly-Used Medication for the Treatment of Pediatric Severe Obesity

Project Summary/Abstract Severe obesity in children is a highly prevalent, serious and chronic disease that directly leads to severe obesity in adults and the subsequent enormous social and financial burden on society. Lifestyle therapy is the cornerstone of pediatric obesity treatment, but this intervention when used alone is often insufficient for achieving clinically significant and durable BMI reduction. Adjunct anti-obesity medications may improve outcomes of this disease, but the pharmacological options used for obesity in children are extremely limited. Thus there is an urgency to identify anti-obesity medications for use in the pediatric population, which are safe, effective, easily administered and affordable. Psychostimulants, the second most commonly prescribed class of medications in children, have a long-standing safety profile and because of their favorable effect on weight, may serve as a useful adjunct to lifestyle therapy for the treatment of severe obesity in this population. Thus, the goal of this pilot and feasibility clinical trial is to estimate the treatment effect of a common psychostimulant, lisdexamfetamine, for the treatment of severe obesity in children. Specifically, 44 children ages 6 to