July 12, 2016 — Two fascinating new studies in the journal Diabetes provide new evidence for the importance of brain activity in obesity and its treatment. The first study documents significant differences in brain response to drinking sugar between adolescents who have obesity and adolescents who have a lean BMI. The second demonstrates how a new obesity treatment – lorcaserin – alters […]
June 17, 2016 — A new study published this week in JAMA provides useful perspective on the safety and efficacy of the newer obesity meds now available for managing the chronic disease of obesity. Rohan Khera and colleagues integrated the results for 29,018 patients in 28 published clinical trials and concluded: Among overweight or obese adults, orlistat [Alli, Xenical], […]
July 2, 2015 — The response to new data on obesity treatment — published today in the New England Journal of Medicine — gives us some flicker of hope that attitudes about obesity treatment are shifting. The publication is the 56-week pivotal safety and efficacy study of liraglutide for treating obesity. Xavier Pi-Sunyer and colleagues found that most (63%) […]
January 24, 2015 — Let’s just say it. European regulators were spooked by obesity drugs for quite a few years. So news that first buproprion/naltrexone (Contrave U.S./Mysimba EU) and now liraglutide (Saxenda) have been recommended for approval in Europe is good news indeed. What spooked the Europeans was the experience with rimonobant. The European Commission (EC) granted Sanofi approval for this obesity treatment in 2006, […]
November 8, 2014 — Some years ago, Louis Aronne predicted that combination drug therapy would be the future of obesity medicine. It’s looking more and more like he was right. An early look at another combination drug for obesity — lorcaserin + phentermine — came with the late-breaking posters on Thursday at ObesityWeek 2014. Steven Smith and colleagues presented results […]
November 5, 2014 — Signs of new growth in obesity treatment options are appearing at ObesityWeek 2014 in Boston this week. Novo Nordisk presented a sweeping scope of results on Tuesday from clinical trials with its drug, liraglutide, which is awaiting final approval from FDA. Researchers are presenting new data for other obesity treatments — lorcaserin, bupropion/naltrexone, and phenteramine/topiramate — that […]
August 7, 2014 — A superficial analysis of new obesity treatment options in JAMA Internal Medicine has prompted some strong pushback from two of the top organizations devoted to obesity. Leaders of the Obesity Society (TOS) and the Obesity Action Coalition (OAC) this week published rebuttals in the journal to the earlier publication on these new obesity drugs. In the original publication, Steven Woloshin and Lisa […]
