Weight loss drugs

A Closer Look: Weight-loss drugs

For many people who carry excess pounds, lifestyle changes don’t do enough or are too hard to maintain day in and day out.

The pharmaceutical industry has been trying to create weight-loss medicines — it is a huge market, after all — but the failures have outnumbered the successes. Dr. Kevin Niswender, an obesity expert at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, says every talk he gives begins with a slide that says: “Pharmacotherapy for obesity has a troubled past — and future.”

Part of the problem is that if there’s a drug they can take, people wrongly think they can stop the harder work of diet and exercise. Doctors who specialize in treating overweight and obese patients say that, at best, medications should be used as an adjunct to lifestyle change. “If you overeat, you’re going to overcome the drug,” says Dr. David Heber, who directs the UCLA Risk Factor Obesity Program.

The other problem for candidate drugs has been their safety profile, with cardiovascular side effects a particular issue, Niswender says. The medical rationale for losing weight is to prevent the development of obesity-related health conditions, such as heart disease and stroke. So a weight-loss drug that increases blood pressure is defeating part of its own purpose.

Here’s a closer look at the most recent weight-loss drugs to come before the Food and Drug Administration.

Contrave

What it is: It’s a combination of two drugs already used for other health conditions: bupropion (Wellbutrin, Zyban), an antidepressant that’s also used to help people quit smoking; and naltrexone (Revia), an antidote to heroin overdose that is also used to help curb alcoholic cravings.

Weight-loss results: A study published in the Lancet in August followed 1,453 overweight or obese patients — half of them for more than a year — and found that those on Contrave lost 5% (lower dose) and 6.1% (higher dose) of their initial body weight compared with a 1.3% loss in the placebo group. Another trial published online in June in the journal Obesity that also included training in diet and exercise found an average 9.3% weight loss with the higher dose compared with 5.1% with a placebo.

Safety profile: Some patients experienced a modest rise (1.5 mm Hg) in blood pressure. Headache, constipation and nausea were also reported.

FDA action: Approval recommended by an expert advisory panel on Dec. 7.

Qnexa

What it is: It’s a combination drug made up of phentermine, a well-known appetite suppressant, and topiramate, which is used to treat epilepsy and migraine headaches.

Weight-loss results: In 1,542 overweight and obese patients, those who took Qnexa for more than a year lost an average of 10.5% (lower dose) and 13.2% (higher dose) of their body weight compared with 2.4% of weight loss in the placebo group, according to company literature.

Safety profile: The main concerns of the advisory panel were the drug’s potential to cause birth defects in women of child-bearing age and an increase in heart rate in some patients. Other side effects were dry mouth, tingling and constipation.

FDA action: An advisory panel recommended against approval in October. The agency detailed what the company ( Vivus) would need to address in a subsequent application. These included managing potential serious side effects and submitting data from patients who had taken the drug for two years.

Lorcaserin (Lorqess)

What it is: The drug acts on one of many serotonin receptors in the brain to suppress appetite.

Weight-loss results: A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in July followed 1,599 overweight or obese patients for a year and found that those on lorcaserin lost an average of 5.8% of their initial body weight compared with 2.2% in the placebo group. A second trial found an average 5.9% weight loss in the drug group compared with 2.8% in the placebo group in about 2,000 overweight or obese patients followed for a year.

Safety profile: The FDA advisory panel cited concerns about tumor growth in animal studies. Other side effects were headache, dizziness and nausea.

Views and News: Aspartame and the pharmaceutical industry

Aspartame promises the taste of sweetness without adding calories and is being used as a sugar substitute more than 4,000 products, including chewing gum and diet carbonated beverages.

After 15 years studying the negative affects of aspartme I’ve decided to share my findings with others. The following is from the world’s No. 1 free Natural Health Newsletter. “Aspartame is highly addictive and accounts for more than 75 percent of the adverse reactions to food additives reported to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

“A few of the 90 different documented symptoms caused by aspartame include weight gain, seizures, depression, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, mental retardation, birth defects, fibromyalgia and diabetes.

“Aspartame degrades into several lethal substances when in aqueous solution at temperatures hotter than 86 degrees Fahrenheit, including highly toxic formaldehyde, a deadly poisonous wood alcohol called methanol, a known tumor agent called diketopiperazine (DKP), which is formed in liquid aspartame during prolonged storage or sitting on shipping docks during a hot day.”

Dr. Russell L. Blaylock, Professor of neurosurgery at the Medical University of Mississippi in his book “Health and Nutrition Secrets,” published in 2002, states: “The neural cell damage caused by excessive aspartate and MSG is why they’re called excitotoxins. They excite the neural cells to death. More than 75 percent of neural cells in the brain are killed before any clinical symptoms of a chronic illness are noticed.”

“Aspartame was originally approved for dry goods in 1981 and for carbonated beverages in 1983. In 1971, neuroscience researcher Dr. John Olney, a professor in the department of psychiatry, School of Medicine, Washington University, a neuroscientist and researcher, and one of the world’s foremost authorities on excitotoxins one of the world’s foremost authorities on excitotoxins, had informed G.D. Searle and Co., the maker of Aspartame, that aspartic acid caused holes in the brains of mice. Aspartame had originally been approved July 1974, but Dr. Olney filed for objections in August 1974 and sought investigations of Searle’s research practice caused the FDA to put approval of aspartame on hold.”

According to Dr. Betty Martini, writer for Rense online, “Ronald Reagan was sworn in as president January 21, 1981. Donald H. Rumsfeld, while still CEO at Searle, was part of Reagan’s transition team. This team handpicked Dr. Arthur Hull Hayes, Jr., to be the new FDA commissioner. One of Hayes’, first official acts as FDA chief was to approve the use of aspartame as an artificial sweetener in dry goods July 18, 1981. Hayes’, left his post at the FDA in November, 1983. Just before leaving office in scandal, Hayes approved the use of aspartame in beverages. According to The Post, Hayes, next job was in the private sector where he served as a high-paid senior medical advisor for Searle’s public relations firm.

According to Joseph Mercola of Global Research an online magazine, Oct. 2005, “Donald Rumsfeld was named Chairman of the Board of Gilead Sciences, the developer of the Tamiflu vaccine.” And later, Mercola continues, “President George W. Bush spent $2 billion on the worthless Tamiflu vaccine that only decreases the amount of days one is sick.” Coincidently, “while serving as Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld purchased additional Gilead stock worth $18 million, making him the largest Gilead stockholder today.”

Both Searle and Gilead profit in the billions of dollars annual. The biggest profit gain isn’t in curing an ailment but prolonging it. Consider the billions of dollars made daily if everyone on the planet was taking a pill a day. Consider the drugs being advertised daily and their life-threatening side-effects ranging from headaches to heart attacks. If I sold a billion pills at $1 each paying out $500 million for a class action lawsuit would merely a cost of doing business.

Pharmaceutical companies rank among the largest contributors of tax-exempt donations and grants to universities, hospitals, medical, scientific and civic organizations to support programs and activities under health education and scientific research. This type of tokenism generates a bias influence. It’s obvious to me there’s a revolving door between large corporations and top government agencies such as our FDA.

There’s also an enormous campaign by drug companies to discredit the competitive edge of alternative medicine since the typical costs of the drug used in chemotherapy runs between $20,000 and $30,000 while alternative therapies are generally inexpensive. And with a pill for every ailment, the pharmaceutical representative becomes the local physician’s main source of indoctrination on the latest drugs. The fox is in the henhouse and the chickens are being fattened for the slaughter.