Friday, December 10, 2010

New Diet Drug Recommended to FDA

A regulatory panel of advisers that the Food and Drug Administration usually follows the recommendations of gave the go ahead on further study of a new weight loss drug called Contrave despite heart risk concerns. It is made by a California-based company, Orexigen, that focuses solely on obesity drugs and has no other products on the market at this time. This news caused their stock to more than double to $12.20/share Tuesday after closing at $4.76 on Monday, December 6th. This is the third drug of it's kind that the panel has considered this year having rejected the other two which were Lorcaserin because of cancer concerns (seems it caused tumors in rats), and Qnexa shot down due to heart risk concerns also. The panel was not too impressed with the modest weight loss experienced by the test group of patients taking Contrave, but they went ahead and approved it anyway out of fear rejection could shut down development of any more such drugs when two out of three Americans are overweight or even obese. Staggering! They want the FDA to do larger clinical studies to examine the potential for heart risks over time.

So if I understand this correctly they want to see if the drug can kill you from a heart attack from losing the very weight that had you at risk of a heart attack in the first place. It sounds like you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. Apparently the test patients exhibited a slight increase in blood pressure and pulse rate versus those on a placebo. Despite these lack luster results and the undesirable side effects, analysts are saying if it comes to market it could hit $1.2 billion in sales by 2018!! I can't imagine that because I hate any kind of side effects from drugs, and I absolutely refuse to continue taking them if I experience any. That's just me though, and I've come to learn over the years that you can't determine success in the market place by my likes and dislikes. That just goes to show you the desperation of people who have gotten themselves in this predicament of being grossly overweight that they would subject themselves to these side effects depredations and exposing themselves to cardiac arrest for the loss of a few pounds they could very well achieve on their own using....you guessed it, common sense. Which leads me to say that I think turning to a drug like this would be another DOUBLE-DUMB weight loss choice.

7 Tips to Keep the Weight Off from Biggest Loser Winners

No comments:

Post a Comment