Losing weight is hard to do especially as we get older. But a new “game-changing” weight loss miracle drug called Semaglutide could turn the tide as it works twice as well as existing medications. Thanks to how it effects the brain in a variety of ways.
Science Alert explains:
“Obesity, which has skyrocketed in recent decades – now defining the body mass of over 40 percent of adult Americans – isn’t just difficult for people to endure and scientists to understand. It’s also incredibly hard to treat.
Beyond commitment to sustained lifestyle changes – healthy eating and exercise, effectively – there are really only two potential options that may help: bariatric surgery and weight-loss medications.
The former is invasive and carries various risks and complications. As for the drugs, they don’t always work, and can have their own adverse effects too.
However, an experimental treatment recently trialled by scientists and detailed in a study published this week could open new doors for treating obesity patients with a weight-loss drug.
In the study, which involved almost 2,000 obese adults across 16 different countries, participants took a weekly dose of a drug called semaglutide, an existing medication already used in the treatment of type 2 diabetes.
A control group took only a placebo, in place of the medication. Both groups received a lifestyle intervention course designed to promote weight loss.
At the end of the trial, the participants who took the placebo lost a small but clinically insignificant amount of weight. But for those who took semaglutide, the effects were pronounced.
After 68 weeks of treatment with the drug – which suppresses appetite due to a variety of effects on the brain – participants taking semaglutide lost on average 14.9 percent of their body weight. And over 30 percent of the group lost more than 20 percent of their body weight.
Broadly speaking, this makes the drug up to twice as effective as existing medications for weight loss, the researchers say, approaching the kind of efficacy of surgical interventions.
‘No other drug has come close to producing this level of weight loss – this really is a game-changer,’ says obesity researcher Rachel Batterham from University College London.
‘For the first time, people can achieve through drugs what was only possible through weight-loss surgery.’
In addition to losing weight, participants registered improvements in other areas, showing reductions in various cardiometabolic risk factors, and reporting quality of life improvements.”
Hopefully this research continues to show promise and this new drug quickly makes it to market so that we can all start losing unnecessary weight. Something that is critically important during a global pandemic that seems to put overweight and unhealthy people at more risk of developing serious complications.
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