Once I get on a puzzle, I can't get off: Cachexia and wasting in 2018

Stephan von Haehling, Stefan D. Anker
Cachexia and wasting disorders can still be considered a niche in the medical arena. The Cachexia Conference, held this year in Maastricht, the Netherlands, from December 7 to 9, has helped establishing this field in clinical and basic research. The conference was founded in 2000 with some 100 attendees in Berlin, Germany. The second conference took place in Berlin again with the number of participants already doubled. Later venues included Rome, Italy, in 2005 and Tampa, Florida, in 2007. The initial Cachexia Conferences were held every other year with the number of attendees increasing to some 426 in Paris, France, in 2015. Of course, the location of the conference does play a major role in the decision to participate or not, and therefore, it is not a surprise that the Kobe Conference in 2013 had a slightly lower number of participants than previous ones. The increasing interest in the field of wasting, however, is also highlighted by the increasing number of abstracts presented at the Cachexia Conference from 197 at the meeting in Milan in 2011 to 250 at the meeting in Rome last year. Of note, these abstracts presented in Rome came from no less than 37 different countries around the globe.