Hagar Ehab Said Emam

Losing weight has significant impact on chronic disease management. Orlistat, a lipase inhibitor, has alternative effect for weight controlling. To find more candidates, we conducted a review of chalcone and xanthine derivatives regarding their anti‐lipase activity. Eight databases were searched including PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science (ISI), Virtual Health Library (VHL), System for Information on Grey Literature in Europe (SIGLE), Global Health Library (GHL), EMBASE, and Google Scholar in August 2018. We found chalcone scaffold was more effective on lipase inhibition than xanthine scaffold. Among 19 investigated chalcones, only isoliquiritigenin and licuroside demonstrated an effect on preventing weight gain and increase in the total cholesterol and total triglycerides aside apart from their high activity on inhibiting lipase. Effect and type of inhibition of individual chalcones differed depending on their structure. In addition, very few studies investigated xanthine compounds and their activities were inconsistent. We suggest more studies investigate the ability of chalcones and modifying their structure to find out other compounds with higher efficacy.