Newly approved drug heralded as 'game changer' in the growing national obesity crisis

The CDC says 42.4% of all adults in the United States suffer from obesity.

A new weight-loss treatment is being heralded by some health experts as "groundbreaking," and a potential "game changer" in the growing epidemic of obesity. Semaglutide, an injectable drug made by the pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk, was approved Friday by the Food and Drug Administration, for patients struggling with chronic obesity. "We don't use those terms lightly," Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine professor Dr. Robert F. Kushner, an obesity medicine specialist and trial investigator for the drug, told ABC News. "I've been involved in the field for 40 years. The reason we think that way, it results in amount of weight loss of an average of 15% or more, which we have not seen before." Currently, 42.4% of all adults in the U.S. suffer from obesity, defined as having a body mass index at or above 30, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.