October 5, 2024 — The remarkable power of an open-label placebo comes through in a new study appearing in Scientific Reports. The power is remarkable simply because “open label” means that everyone receiving a placebo knew that it had no medicinal effect whatsoever. And yet, compared to usual care for overweight and obesity, people lost more weight after four […]
October 4, 2024 — Caution is wise when observational studies compete for our attention. But this one, from JAMA Network Open, is intriguing. In a recent analysis of 33,006 persons with both type 2 diabetes and opioid use disorder, researchers found a signal that semaglutide might lower the risk of opioid overdoses by as much as two-thirds. “It’s a […]
October 3, 2024 — Late yesterday, FDA announced that Lilly’s tirzepatide shortage is officially over. Both Mounjaro and Zepbound are fully available in all marketed strengths and dosage forms. “The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has determined the shortage of tirzepatide injection, a glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) medication, has been resolved. Tirzepatide injection has been in shortage since 2022 […]
October 2, 2024 — We are witnessing something rare. It is a sweeping change in how people are looking at a whole spectrum of chronic diseases. They all tie back to obesity: hypertension, high cholesterol, diabetes, many cancers, liver disease, kidney disease, and joint disease come quickly to mind. Most of the time, the change in perspective comes in […]
October 1, 2024 — Almost immediately when the COVID pandemic came to dominate our lives, speculation began that the stress and changes it brought would make us all gain weight. Such speculation has not let up, even now. But it turns out that for adults, this is a false narrative. The best data we have for population-based estimates of […]
