This Very Expensive Diabetes Drug Helps Promote Weight Loss
A new promising diabetes drug has been announced but it’s also very very expensive:
Saxenda: This Diabetes Drug Helps Promote Weight Loss, But There’s A Catch
Saxenda is a treatment for diabetes that could also help people looking to lose weight. People who injected the drug every day for a year lost an average of 18.5 pounds, compared with six pounds among a control group taking a placebo.
Liraglutide (popularly known as Saxenda) was studied in 3,700 overweight and obese people who have not been diagnosed with diabetes. However, around half the subjects in the study exhibited prediabetes. Subjects in the study were divided into an experimental group of 2,500 participants who received injections of the drug, and a control population of 1,200 people were provided with a placebo. All the subjects in the experiment were provided with lifestyle counseling aimed at teaching methods to promote weight loss.
After 56 weeks, 63 percent of subjects receiving the drug lost 5 percent or more of their body weight, while 33 percent lost at least 10 percent of their initial body mass. This compared with 27 percent and 10 percent, respectively, among participants receiving a placebo.
“It is a very effective drug. It seems to be as good as any of the others on the market, so it adds another possibility for doctors to treat patients who are having trouble either losing weight or maintaining weight loss once they get the weight off,” Xavier Pi-Sunyer from the Columbia University Medical Center said…
