The drug of diabetes injectable seems to help obese people who have no diabetes spill extra pounds, but larger studies are needed to prove their safety and efficacy for weight loss, researchers say.
liraglutide was approved for the treatment of type 2 diabetes in Europe, but is not yet approved for use in the United States.
In previous studies, patients with diabetes that received once daily injections of lost weight of drugs and showed improvements in blood sugar.
In the recently published study, people with overweight without diabetes receiving daily injections from liraglutide have lost more weight than patients treated with oral orlistat weight loss drug sold as xenical and alli in U.S.
liraglutide belongs to the same drug class that the treatment of diabetes byetta, which also demonstrated to promote weight loss.
The mechanism by which drugs affect weight is not completely understood, but it is believed to delete the appetite and delay the movement of food from the stomach to the small intestine. Thought is that this helps people feel more time after eating.
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All study participants followed restricted calorie diets, which contained about 500 less calories per day than they needed to maintain their weight. They also increased their physical activity.
Until the study, patients treated with lyraglutida had significantly lost more weight than placebo-treated patients or those who took the drug of oral weight loss.
Orlistat patients lost an average of 9 pounds during the study of 20 weeks, compared to a weight loss of 10.5 pounds in patients at the lower dose of lyraglutide (1,2 milligrams per day).Patients treated with the highest dose of liraglutide (3 miligrams daily) lost more weight, with average of almost 16 pounds. These patients also had more nausea and vomiting, with 3.5% of participants withdraw from the study as a result of these side effects.
Patients treated with placebo lost the smallest amount of weight - about 6 pounds.
The study was paid by the new Liraglutide manufacturer Nordisk, which also provided independent financial support to several authors of study.New Nordisk Chef Sciences Mads Krogsgaard Thomsen tells WebMD the company will decide whether to go ahead with larger studies, since the FDA decides whether or not to approve the liraglutide for use as a diabetes treatment.
This decision is expected by the end of the year.
"The study published today in Lancet is encouraging, but it is important to note that this is only data from Phase II," says Thomsen.
Weight Loss Researcher George A. Bray, MD, tells the WebMD that it remains to be seen if people will embrace a weight loss drug they have to inject, even if they are more effective than the approved oral treatments.
.Patients taking BYETTA inject the drug twice a day; Liraglutide is given once a day.
"My guess is that there will be versions of acting much longer than both drugs in the future that will require much less frequent injections," says Bray. "But it is not yet clear if people who are not accustomed to injections will take shots to lose weight."
New Nordisk is now testing a medicine similar to the liraglutide that is injected once a week instead of once a day.
Bray would also like to see studies to determine if combining byetta or liraglutide with approved weight loss drugs leads to greater weight loss than it was reported with any of the drugs.
"Of course (BYETTA and Liraglutide) promote weight loss in patients with diabetes," he says. "But your safety and utility for weight loss in people without diabetes continues to be proven."
