The current issue of “Postępy Nauk Medycznych” – similarly to the last one – is devoted to obesity which one of the most common health issues related to life style. We present several review papers pointing the readers’ attention to the fact that obesity is related to an increased risk for metabolic syndromes, many diseases, and even earlier death. This knowledge may be helpful for doctors of many specializations, especially in their daily clinical work; namely, we hope that the current publication will help the doctors understand how to prevent and treat obesity as well as how to choose most appropriate intervention (dietetic, pharmacological, surgical) for an individual patient.

The first article written by Walicka et al. “Metabolic Syndrome – does it exist?” revealed controversies concerning diagnosis of metabolic syndrome and its usefulness in every day practice (1). The authors discuss problems arising from changes of definition, and as a consequence, difficulties derived from the lack of one binding criteria of diagnosis. The authors presented four principal outcomes causing that diagnosis of metabolic syndrome should be an individual decision of the practitioner.

In the article by Kuźmińska et al. “Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA)” the authors state that obesity is a major risk factor of OSA (2). They emphasize that in assessment of the disease, in addition to BMI, adjusted neck circumference plays an important role. The authors present hormones that are responsible for obesity and the impact of reduction of obesity in the treatment of OSA and reduction of the severity of the disease.

In the article “Obesity and osteoarthritis” written by Jasik et al. it is emphasized that obesity is a well-known risk factor for the development of knee, hip, and perhaps hand OA (3). They authors stress additionally that pathogenesis of osteoarthritis is still unclear and that future studies are required to fully understand the molecular mechanisms responsible for pathogenesis of OA.