[ad_1]
In the simplest terms, obesity is the product of a body’s energy production that is less than its energy input. But in reality, this complex and mysterious disease is not simple.
Obesity, which has skyrocketed in recent decades – now defining the body mass of more than 40% of American adults – is not just hard for people and scientists to bear to understand. It is also incredibly difficult to deal with.
Beyond committing to lasting lifestyle changes – eating healthy and exercising, effectively – there are actually only two potential options that can help: weight loss surgery and medication. to lose weight.
The first is invasive and involves various risks and complications. As for drugs, they don’t always work and can also have their own side effects.
However, an experimental treatment recently tested by scientists and detailed in a study published this week could open new doors for treating obese patients with a weight-loss drug.
In the study, which involved nearly 2,000 obese adults in 16 different countries, participants took a weekly dose of a medicine called semaglutide, an existing medicine already used in the treatment of type 2 diabetes.
A control group took only a placebo, instead of the drug. Both groups received a lifestyle intervention course designed to aid weight loss.
At the end of the trial, the participants who took the placebo lost a clinically insignificant small amount of weight. But for those who were taking semaglutide, the effects were pronounced.
After 68 weeks of treatment with the drug – which suppresses appetite due to various effects on the brain – participants taking semaglutide lost an average of 14.9% of their body weight. And over 30% of the group lost more than 20% of their body weight.
Overall, this makes the drug up to twice as effective as existing drugs at losing weight, the researchers say, approaching the type of effectiveness of the surgeries.
“No other drug has been successful in producing this level of weight loss – it is a real game changer,” says Rachel Batterham, obesity researcher at University College London.
“For the first time, people can achieve with medication what was only possible with weight loss surgery.”
In addition to losing weight, participants recorded improvements in other areas, showing reductions in various cardiometabolic risk factors and reporting improvements in quality of life.
Although the results are convincing, the dosage of semaglutide for anti-obesity effects has some drawbacks.
Mild to moderate effects were reported by many participants (in the semaglutide and placebo groups), including nausea and diarrhea. Although the effects were temporary, almost 60 of the participants were enough to stop their treatment, compared to only five in the placebo group.
Currently, the drug requires a weekly injection to work – whereas an oral form of the drug would likely be preferred by patients.
More importantly, we do not yet have data on what happened to participants after stopping the drug regimen at the end of the trial.
For at least one person, however, who spoke to The New York Times, her weight started to climb after the trial was over.
“While drugs like this may prove useful in the short term to achieve rapid weight loss in severe obesity, they are not a quick fix for preventing or treating less severe degrees of obesity,” says nutritionist Tom Sanders, professor emeritus at King’s College London. , who did not participate in the study.
“Public health measures that encourage behavior changes such as regular physical activity and moderation of dietary energy intake are still needed.”
No one would deny the wisdom of this, but if further analysis of semaglutide proves positive, we might also be considering an important new pharmaceutical option to help fight obesity.
And that option could come sooner than we think.
The study, funded by pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk – which sells semaglutide as an anti-diabetic drug – is now being presented as evidence to international health regulators, in support of a claim to market the drug as a treatment of obesity.
The US FDA, along with its counterparts in the UK and Europe, is currently evaluating the data.
The results are reported in The New England Journal of Medicine.
[ad_2]
Source link