Obesity is a chronic, relapsing, and multifactorial disease, with a rising prevalence and an associated high economic burden. Achieving successful and sustained weight loss outcomes with current interventions is challenging. This is due, at least in part, to the disease’s heterogenous pathophysiology that is yet to be completely understood. Technological advances and greater capabilities for the extraction and storage of information have facilitated the application of precision medicine.
Obesity phenotyping has arisen as a tool to address the obesity heterogeneity. Clinically, its capacity to rely on objective and quantifiable traits, make phenotyping a well-grounded tool for clinicians to select the appropriate interventions for the right patient with the end goal of improving weight loss outcomes. Translating this precision medicine approach to a larger and more heterogenous population will undoubtedly increase its external validity and, therefore, its generalizability, which is the ultimate goal in clinical practice.