By Rachael
Rettner - Senior Writer
Participants
lost 15% of their body weight.
A diabetes drug may
also be a promising treatment for obesity — in a new
study, people taking the drug lost a stunning 15% of their body weight, which
is more than has been seen with any other obesity drug on the market.
The drug, known as
semaglutide, is an injectable medication that's already approved to help
control blood sugar levels in people with Type
2 diabetes.
But the drug also suppresses appetite.
In the new study,
published Wednesday (Feb. 10) in The
New England Journal of Medicine, researchers randomly assigned 1,961
adults who were obese or overweight to receive semaglutide or a placebo as an
injection once a week for 68 weeks. Participants also received counseling
sessions once a month to help them adhere to a reduced-calorie diet, and they
were encouraged to increase their physical activity.
By the end of the
study, those who received semaglutide lost 14.9% of their body weight, on
average, compared with just 2.4% of body weight in the placebo group.
Five other drugs are
approved to treat obesity, but even the most effective of these drugs results
in about 7.5% weight loss, according to The
New York Times.
And these drugs can typically be used for only short periods of time, the Times
reported. For example, the weight loss drug phentermine is typically taken for
3 to 6 weeks, according to the National
Institutes of Health,
a much shorter amount of time than the 68-week treatment with semaglutide used
in the study.
"This is the
start of a new era of effective treatments for obesity," Dr. Robert F.
Kushner, an obesity researcher at Northwestern University Feinberg School of
Medicine, who led the study, told the Times.
People who took
semaglutide were more likely to experience gastrointestinal side effects,
including nausea, diarrhea, vomiting and constipation, compared with the
placebo group. But these side effects tended to be temporary.
The study also did
not look at the drug's effects beyond 68 weeks, and people would likely need to
stay on the drug for life to prevent their weight from coming back, the Times
reported.
And weight loss drugs
that appear to do well in trials may not be as effective in real-world
settings, according
to CNN.
What's more, several weight loss drugs that achieved approval from the Food and
Drug Administration were later recalled because of side effects, CNN reported.
The study was funded
by the maker of semaglutide, Novo Nordisk. The Danish pharmaceutical company
has already submitted an application with the FDA for approval of semaglutide
for chronic weight management, according to CNN.
Originally published on Live
Science.
No comments:
Post a Comment