Contrave, A New Weight Loss Pill Combines Anti-Addiction Medication And An Antidepressant

Contrave, A New Weight Loss Pill Combines Anti-Addiction Medication And An Antidepressant.
An boffin monitory panel recommended on Tuesday that Contrave, a revitalized weight-loss crank that combines an antidepressant with an anti-addiction medication, be approved by the US Food and Drug Administration. The 13-7 preference in favor of Contrave came centre of agency concerns that the sedate might raise blood pressure in some patients and increase the endanger of heart attacks and strokes among some users, according to the Associated Press visit this link. But panelists voted 11-8 earlier in the lifetime that those quiescent health risks could be studied after Contrave was approved.

The FDA does not have to follow the suggestion of its advisory committees, but it typically does. The activity is expected to make a decision on Contrave by Jan 31, 2011, the wire post reported. contrave is manufactured by orexigen therapeutics inc. In October, the FDA voted against approving two other weight-loss drugs, Arena Pharmaceuticals' lorcaserin and Vivus' Qnexa, because of safeness concerns, according to the AP as explained here. Last July, a swat funded by Orexigen and published in The Lancet found that Contrave helped users spread pounds when infatuated along with a fine fettle house and exercise.

People who took the drug for more than a year lost an commonplace of 5 percent or more of body weight, depending on the dose used, the party said. However, the regimen did come with side effects, and about half of analyse participants dropped out before completing a year of treatment. Contrave is syndication of two well-known drugs, naltrexone (Revia, worn to fight addictions) and the antidepressant bupropion (known by a or slue of names, including Wellbutrin).

The drug appears to boost substance loss by changing the workings of the body's central nervous system, the researchers said. The library enrolled men (15 percent) and women (85 percent) from around the country, ranging in time from 18 to 65. They were all either chubby or overweightm, with loaded blood fat levels or high blood pressure.

The participants were told to put less and exercise, and they were randomly assigned to round a twice-daily placebo or a combination of the two drugs at one of two levels. After 56 weeks, only about half (870) of the more than 1700 participants initially enrolled remained in the study. Almost half (48 percent) of those who took the highest dispense of naltrexone vanished 5 percent of their ballast or more, while only 16 percent of those who took placebos did.

However, about 30 percent of those taking Contrave versed nausea, the examination authors say, and other philosophy effects included headache, constipation, dizziness, vomiting and desiccate mouth. Still, Contrave may give society struggling to lose weight a creative option, the researchers contended.

The Lancet findings echo those of studies into other senate drugs such as Meridia, Xenical and Alli, said Lona Sandon, an aide professor of clinical nutrition at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas and spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association. "When these are combined with a modestly reduced calorie diet, bashful amounts of manipulate set-back are achieved. One awesome thing to note is the study drop-out rate of 50 percent. This may have been due to arrogance effects of medications, the experience that it is hard to stick to dietary changes for 56 weeks, or the accomplishment that slow and only modest weight loss did not meet participant expectations".

Cynthia Sass, a New York City-based nutritionist and author, added that drugs hand-me-down to medicate addiction also appear to help with consequence control, supporting "the notion that food can be addictive for many people". An accompanying Lancet column noted that one disturb is that blood pressure did not drop as much as expected in the higher weight-loss group get more information. "More figures are needed to get a better overall assessment of cardiovascular risk of this otherwise encouraging combination therapy for obesity," wrote Professor Arne Astrup, a nutrition dexterous at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark.