02-11-2021, 01:29 PM
In a clinical trial, participants taking semaglutide lost 15 percent of their body weight, on average.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/10/healt...utide.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.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/10/healt...utide.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.”