Stepping down as Editor-in-Chief.

With this issue, I am stepping down as Editor-in-Chief of Obesity Research. I believe that the last 5 years have been exciting and very productive ones for the journal. The impact factor of the journal has greatly improved, the number of manuscripts has increased steadily, we have moved to monthly publication with an increased number of articles per issue, and 2 years ago we made the journal available online. The quality of the manuscripts is continuously improving. We have always maintained standards of which our sponsoring society can be proud, but we have also gradually become more selective. It is a source of pride to me that, even though Obesity Research is sponsored by the North American Association for the Study of Obesity, which is a society made up primarily of Canadians, Mexicans, and Americans, we have published and continue to welcome and receive manuscripts from all over the world. We are thus truly a global publication, as we should be, focused on a disease with a global impact that is rapidly increasing. The last 5 years have brought with them a great deal of new knowledge about obesity, knowledge that has required rapid communication. First, there have been great strides in the genetics of the disease, which can be readily discerned in the annual genetic map that we publish at the beginning of each year. Advances in both animal and human areas have been unprecedented and have opened new avenues of investigation into important genes for the development of obesity and for the distribution of body fat. New information on the regulation of food intake and energy expenditure and of the peripheral signals and the central neurotransmitters that are important in this regard continues to pour out of laboratories around the world. In addition, new insights into the molecular mechanisms of the effects of total fat burden and fat distribution on the comorbidities of obesity are constantly being unveiled. Pivotal in this have been studies of the adipocyte and the growing realization that this cell is not a passive, but is rather a very active player in the homeostasis of the body, and that the adipose depots are endocrine tissues playing a major role in health and disease. At the same time, clinical research has clarified the relationships between obesity and insulin resistance and the components of the insulin resistance syndrome, including hypertension, glucose intolerance, dyslipidemia, coagulation abnormalities, and inflammatory events. This has been abetted with the outstanding investigation into the mechanisms for molecular insulin action and mechanisms of signal transduction for insulin and other hormonal secretion. In addition, more is being discovered about the underlying behavioral patterns that lead to obesity and other eating disorders. That behavior is genetically determined in part is not in question. The challenge is to sort out what is determined by genes and what is environmentally induced. This is crucial to understanding how to achieve behavioral change for the better, with an impetus in populations for deterring the natural tendency to eat more and exercise less as economic development is enhanced. Increasing interest is being focused on the economics of obesity: the economics of prevention, of treatment, and of public education. We have had less of this type of publication in the Obesity Research, and I hope that this will be rectified in the future. I believe it is important for us to focus more on the initiation of food-intake regulation in children and adolescents, so we can begin to define strategies for prevention. Unfortunately, we are just waking up to how severe the problem has become, and we need more and better investigative strategies to come to sound public-health conclusions. My term has concluded in leading this journal. It has been a pleasure, a challenge, and a great educational experience. I wish to thank first of all the investigators for sending in their work for us to publish and all the reviewers for their support and unselfish giving of time and knowledge to the cause of science. With this stint as editor, I have become a great champion of the peer-review process. I believe our reviewers have been enormously responsible as a group and have helped our authors produce better, clearer, more incisive papers than they would have done otherwise, and at not a great cost in time to publication. I wish to particularly single out Ms. Helene RosenDivision of Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Nutrition, New York Obesity Research Center, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center, New York, New York. Address correspondence to F. Xavier Pi-Sunyer, MD, Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Nutrition, New York Obesity Research Center, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center, 111 Amsterdam Avenue, New York, NY 10025. E-mail: fxp1@columbia.edu Copyright © 2002 NAASO