A new ‘diet pill’ has stood up well in a major clinical trial published yesterday.
Arena Pharmaceutical’s lorcaserin proved to be safe and helped patients both lose weight and keep it off, albeit in combination with behavioural modification. After a year nearly 50% of obese patients given the drug had shed 5% or more of their body weight, compared to around 20% of patients given a placebo, according to a study published in the NEJM.
Crucially, the drug didn’t appear to increase the risk of a particular type of heart problem. This was a known side effect of previous appetite suppressants that worked in the way lorcaserin is thought to: by working on serotonin receptors and hence targeting areas of the brain involved in appetite. (Many existing weight loss treatments just block the uptake of fat, which can have some unpleasant knock ons.)
“The history of pharmacologic treatment of obesity is characterized by repetition: most drugs that have achieved regulatory approval and reached the markets have subsequently been withdrawn owing to postmarketing discovery of serious adverse effects,” writes Arne Astrup in an editorial accompanying the study.
“…The justification for using lorcaserin to manage obesity is not greater efficacy than currently available drugs, but rather an apparently much better safety and adverse-event profile and very clear-cut beneficial effects on risk factors for type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.”
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“Arena Pharmaceuticals’ lorcaserin is one of three drugs that are boosting hope for a new generation of more effective weight-loss medicines. One gets a Food and Drug Administration review on Thursday and the others, later this year.”
“What’s most impressive about this two-year clinical trial is how unimpressive it is. This close look at lorcaserin reaffirms that better daily use of feet and forks holds far greater promise for meaningful, sustainable and affordable weight control than pharmacotherapy.”
David Katz, director of the Prevention Research Center at Yale University School of Medicine (HealthDay).