The Online Clinic news blog endeavours to bring you all the latest news on developments in weight loss treatments as soon as they occur. It is unusual, however, to have a week where weight loss treatments figure so heavily in the national news headlines. There have been two major weight loss stories this week: Acomplia has had its European license suspended and a new weight loss drug has been announced, one which scientist claim will be ‘twice as effective’ as anything currently available.
There were, until last week, only three drugs that were licensed in this country for use as weight loss treatments. That number has now dropped to two. The European regulatory board has decided that the weight loss benefits to be had from Acomplia were outweighed by the drug’s potential side effects of psychosis, depression and suicidal thoughts. With only two drugs remaining, Xenical and Reductil, there is now a gap in the market for a new weight loss drug and scientists have announced that one is already in development, and is producing results which outweigh any of its predecessors.
Tesofensine targets the part of the brain which controls appetite and makes people feel full sooner than they would without the drug. If tesofensine is taken for six months it produces an average weight loss of one and a half stone. That figure is double the weight loss produced by any of the drugs that are currently licensed.
Scientists at the University of Copenhagen carried out the research and studied how the drug affected 200 men and women. The results were published in the medical journal The Lancet. It is reckoned that the drug will be available in about three years time, though it does have a list of potential side effects that include nausea, diarrhoea, constipation and insomnia. When one compares these with the potential side effects of Acomplia, however, they do not seem particularly serious when weighed up against the potential benefits.
We should point out that tesofensine has yet to undergo the critical phase III clinical trials where it is tested on a much larger group of people. It is not unusual for prospective medications to show a less promise once they enter this phase of development so we would caution against too much celebration at this stage. If tesofensine does prove itself to be safe and effective in phase III trials then you can guarantee that this will be a blockbuster drug considering that adult obesity rates have quadrupled in the last 25 years.