Lifestyle change adds to weight-loss drug’s effect

By Gene Emery

BOSTON (Reuters) – Obese patients who took the diet drug
Meridia and received intensive weight-loss counseling lost
twice as much weight as patients who only took the drug,
according to a study released on Wednesday.

Nearly a third of Americans are considered overweight and
the U.S. Food and Drug Administration regards a diet pill as
effective if it helps a 200-pound (90-kg) person lose at least
10 pounds (4.5 kg) in a year. Although most obese people need
to lose far more than 10 pounds (4.5 kg), doctors contend even
a moderate loss has health benefits.

Meridia, generically known as sibutramine, and Roche’s
Xenical are the only diet drugs licensed by the FDA.

In the study of Abbott Laboratories Inc.’s Meridia,
published in the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers
found that when the drug was combined with 30 weight-loss
counseling sessions lasting 90 minutes each, the treatment
produced an average weight loss of 27 pounds (12.1 kg) for 60
volunteers.

The counseling ranged from advice on healthier eating
habits to other behavioral changes that can reduce weight.

Another 55 patients took the drug but received no
counseling and lost 11 pounds (5 kg). A third group of 55
volunteers, who only received counseling, lost an average of 15
pounds (1.7 kg).

Patients typically weighed about 240 pounds (108 kg) at the
start of the study, which was sponsored by the National
Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.

The researchers, led by Thomas Wadden of the University of
Pennsylvania School of Medicine, also found that obese patients
who received both the drug and counseling lost the most when
they recorded how much food they were eating.

Those who regularly logged their consumption shed 49 pounds
(18.1 kg) versus 17 pounds (7.7 kg) among those who did not
track what they ate.

A separate study, also published in the journal, examined
the experimental diet medicine Acomplia, or rimonabant. The
study was financed by Sanofi-Aventis SA, the drug’s
manufacturer.

Participants in the study weighed 192 pounds (96 kg) on
average and had high cholesterol.

Thirty-three percent of patients who ate a low-calorie diet
and took 20 milligrams of Acomplia every day for a year lost an
average of 15 pounds (6.9 kg) and three inches from their
waistlines. Their “good” cholesterol levels also climbed, the
study said.

Placebo recipients lost three pounds (1.5 kg) and an inch

from their waists.

But more than a third of the study’s 1,036 volunteers
dropped out of the study, complaining mostly of depression,
anxiety and nausea.

In an editorial in the journal, Susan Yanovski of the
National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney
Diseases, characterized the weight loss from Acomplia as
“moderate” and comparable to other drugs.

She cautioned that while weight loss seems to improve risk
factors such as blood pressure, “no study has yet demonstrated
conclusively that any weight-loss treatment” actually reduces
the risk of heart disease.

And she said it remains uncertain whether obese people who
lose weight end up being as healthy as people who were never
obese.