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+--- Thread: ‘A Game Changer’: Drug Brings Weight Loss in Patients With Obesity (/showthread.php?tid=252805)
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‘A Game Changer’: Drug Brings Weight Loss in Patients With Obesity - Speedy - 02-11-2021
In a clinical trial, participants taking semaglutide lost 15 percent of their body weight, on average.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/10/health/obesity-weight-loss-drug-semaglutide.html
For the first time, a drug has been shown so effective against obesity that patients may dodge many of its worst consequences, including diabetes, researchers reported on Wednesday.
The drug, semaglutide, made by Novo Nordisk, already is marketed as a treatment for Type 2 diabetes. In a clinical trial published in the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers at Northwestern University in Chicago tested semaglutide at a much higher dose as an anti-obesity medication.
Nearly 2,000 participants, at 129 centers in 16 countries, injected themselves weekly with semaglutide or a placebo for 68 weeks. Those who got the drug lost close to 15 percent of their body weight, on average, compared with 2.4 percent among those receiving the placebo.
More than a third of the participants receiving the drug lost more than 20 percent of their weight. Symptoms of diabetes and pre-diabetes improved in many patients.
Those results far exceed the amount of weight loss observed in clinical trials of other obesity medications, experts said. The drug is a “game-changer,” said Dr. Robert F. Kushner, an obesity researcher at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, who led the study. “This is the start of a new era of effective treatments for obesity.”
Re: ‘A Game Changer’: Drug Brings Weight Loss in Patients With Obesity - Speedy - 02-11-2021
“Biggest Loser” TV show. (From 2016.)
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/02/health/biggest-loser-weight-loss.html
After ‘The Biggest Loser,’ Their Bodies Fought to Regain Weight
Contestants lost hundreds of pounds during Season 8, but gained them back. A study of their struggles helps explain why so many people fail to keep off the weight they lose.
Danny Cahill stood, slightly dazed, in a blizzard of confetti as the audience screamed and his family ran on stage. He had won Season 8 of NBC’s reality television show “The Biggest Loser,” shedding more weight than anyone ever had on the program — an astonishing 239 pounds in seven months.
When he got on the scale for all to see that evening, Dec. 8, 2009, he weighed just 191 pounds, down from 430. Dressed in a T-shirt and knee-length shorts, he was lean, athletic and as handsome as a model.
“I’ve got my life back,” he declared. “I mean, I feel like a million bucks.”
Mr. Cahill left the show’s stage in Hollywood and flew directly to New York to start a triumphal tour of the talk shows, chatting with Jay Leno, Regis Philbin and Joy Behar. As he heard from fans all over the world, his elation knew no bounds.
But in the years since, more than 100 pounds have crept back onto his 5-foot-11 frame despite his best efforts. In fact, most of that season’s 16 contestants have regained much if not all the weight they lost so arduously. Some are even heavier now.
Yet their experiences, while a bitter personal disappointment, have been a gift to science. A study of Season 8’s contestants has yielded surprising new discoveries about the physiology of obesity that help explain why so many people struggle unsuccessfully to keep off the weight they lose.
Kevin Hall, a scientist at a federal research center who admits to a weakness for reality TV, had the idea to follow the “Biggest Loser” contestants for six years after that victorious night. The project was the first to measure what happened to people over as long as six years after they had lost large amounts of weight with intensive dieting and exercise.
The results, the researchers said, were stunning. They showed just how hard the body fights back against weight loss.
“It is frightening and amazing,” said Dr. Hall, an expert on metabolism at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, which is part of the National Institutes of Health. “I am just blown away.”
It has to do with resting metabolism, which determines how many calories a person burns when at rest. When the show began, the contestants, though hugely overweight, had normal metabolisms for their size, meaning they were burning a normal number of calories for people of their weight. When it ended, their metabolisms had slowed radically and their bodies were not burning enough calories to maintain their thinner sizes.
Researchers knew that just about anyone who deliberately loses weight — even if they start at a normal weight or even underweight — will have a slower metabolism when the diet ends. So they were not surprised to see that “The Biggest Loser” contestants had slow metabolisms when the show ended.
What shocked the researchers was what happened next: As the years went by and the numbers on the scale climbed, the contestants’ metabolisms did not recover. They became even slower, and the pounds kept piling on. It was as if their bodies were intensifying their effort to pull the contestants back to their original weight.
Mr. Cahill was one of the worst off. As he regained more than 100 pounds, his metabolism slowed so much that, just to maintain his current weight of 295 pounds, he now has to eat 800 calories a day less than a typical man his size. Anything more turns to fat.
Re: ‘A ‘A Game Changer’: Drug Brings Weight Loss in Patients With Obesity - SteveO - 02-11-2021
Before we get much into "game changing" as it were, it should be noted that the article reads a bit like an advertorial. Scant mention of currently known side effects which it sounds like...can get pretty serious: [via wikipedia] nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain, and constipation may occur.[12] In people with heart problems, it can cause damage to the back of the eye (retinopathy).[13] Side effects include medullary thyroid cancer, kidney problems, diabetic retinopathy, allergic reactions, low blood sugar, and pancreatitis.[9]
I hope this drug does not create additional problems down the road. Heralded diet treatments always seem to come with an unseen price. One of my mom's close friends pays it with daily exhaustion.
Not coming down on you, Speedy, just wish the article had more coloring to it.
Re: ‘A Game Changer’: Drug Brings Weight Loss in Patients With Obesity - macphanatic - 02-11-2021
Speedy wrote:
In a clinical trial, participants taking semaglutide lost 15 percent of their body weight, on average.
So, should one pack on extra pounds before starting this program in order to loose more?
miley-laughing001:
Re: ‘A ‘A Game Changer’: Drug Brings Weight Loss in Patients With Obesity - MrNoBody - 02-11-2021
Any guesses on when Novo Nordisk will get this approved for ACA & Medicaid payment?
c'mon, you know the lobbyists are already hard at work...
Re: ‘A ‘A Game Changer’: Drug Brings Weight Loss in Patients With Obesity - Speedy - 02-11-2021
MrNoBody wrote:
Any guesses on when Novo Nordisk will get this approved for ACA & Medicaid payment?
c'mon, you know the lobbyists are already hard at work...
“Generally, insurers have refused to pay for the weight-loss drugs on the market. Semaglutide is likely to be expensive. The lower dose used to treat diabetes carries an average retail price of nearly $1,000 a month. (Insurers usually pay for diabetes drugs, Dr. Kushner noted.)”
Re: ‘A ‘A Game Changer’: Drug Brings Weight Loss in Patients With Obesity - rz - 02-11-2021
SteveO wrote:
Before we get much into "game changing" as it were, it should be noted that the article reads a bit like an advertorial. Scant mention of currently known side effects which it sounds like...can get pretty serious: [via wikipedia] nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain, and constipation may occur.[12] In people with heart problems, it can cause damage to the back of the eye (retinopathy).[13] Side effects include medullary thyroid cancer, kidney problems, diabetic retinopathy, allergic reactions, low blood sugar, and pancreatitis.[9]
Your list sounds exactly like the side effects of EVERY drug advertised on TV. The only thing I don't see is the warning to tell your doctor if you've been to a region where fungal infections are common...
Re: ‘A Game Changer’: Drug Brings Weight Loss in Patients With Obesity - Janit - 02-11-2021
All this makes me wonder about epigenetic mechanisms controlling metabolism.
Re: ‘A Game Changer’: Drug Brings Weight Loss in Patients With Obesity - Lux Interior - 02-12-2021
Careful.
Skinny people get angry whenever anyone suggests that people might be prone to getting fat instead of them just being lazy.
Re: ‘A Game Changer’: Drug Brings Weight Loss in Patients With Obesity - macphanatic - 02-12-2021
Is it genetics or the modified foods we have today that are the issue?