September 3, 2022 — ICER – the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review – has released its final report on the effectiveness and value of obesity meds and set a public hearing for September 16. Let’s say it right up front. This private nonprofit is trying to do something that is almost impossibly hard. Making objective sense from the […]
July 14, 2022 — We’ve all got our reading assignments. The Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER) has released its draft report on effectiveness and value for the current options in obesity medicine. There’s a lot to process in there. But the bottom line is clear enough. Phentermine/topiramate (Qsymia) offers the best value, says the report. The most […]
June 28, 2022 — Today we will take every little bit of good news we can. So the word that FDA is adding one more obesity treatment option for teens with Qsymia, though incremental, is certainly good news. In approving the drug for this use, FDA noted that the teens taking it lost between five and seven percent of […]
May 2, 2022 — At the Pediatric Endocrine Society annual meeting this weekend came some good news. Pediatric obesity care providers may soon have one more option for treating teens with obesity. In a well-controlled study of Qsymia for treating obesity in teens, Aaron Kelly reported impressive results. He and his colleagues tested two doses – a mid-range and […]
June 1, 2019 — Fast and easy is not an option for obesity care, unfortunately. Smart and reasonably effective options exist, but this is a chronic disease. Nobody can snap their fingers and make it go away. That’s probably why Vivus recently found itself in trouble with FDA for claiming three times faster weight loss with Qsymia. FDA Warning […]
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], […]
October 6, 2015 — Recent reports from business analysts are making it clear that Saxenda is succeeding in the market for obesity treatment where other competitors are struggling. Marketed by Novo Nordisk, Saxenda is the fourth new obesity drug treatment introduced in the last four years. The other three — Qsymia, Belviq, and Contrave — all seem to be […]
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%) […]
June 6, 2015 — It’s a bumpy ride right now for people who are trying to make a business of providing obesity care. This really applies to all segments — consumer weight management, medical obesity care, pharmaceuticals, surgery — but the most visible evidence of bumpiness is playing out in the pharmaceutical segment of obesity care. On one hand, […]
March 28, 2015 — As expected, Mysimba (naltrexone/bupropion, known as Contrave in the U.S.) became the second new obesity medicine to be fully approved for sale in Europe this week. This week broke a nine-year drought for new obesity medicines in Europe. Now analysts are busy trying to figure out who will be the winners in obesity treatment. Such […]
