Online Pharmacy Medicine Blog

Orexigen Therapeutics Inc. reports that the a mid-stage trial of Empatic met its goal of demonstrating significant weight loss.

This news comes at a great time. America is getting bigger by the day; roughly two-thirds of adults in the United States are overweight, and almost one-third are obese.

Today, ABC News reported

An ongoing giant study of American nurses showed that only about 10 percent who made it to age 70 could be considered in top shape. Women who steadily gained weight from age 18 on ended up in the worst shape, the researchers said.

Most had some kind of physical or mental limitation, and more than a third had both chronic diseases and also mental or physical limitations.

Currently there are only a few options for weight loss aids deemed safe by the FDA: Meridia, Xenical, and Alli.

The good news is that results from the preliminary trails on Empatic look promising. Orexigen said

the 729-patient trial found that 60.4 percent of obese people given the highest dose of the drug lost at least 5 percent of their body weight, compared with 14.7 percent of patients given a placebo.

The 24-week trial also found that patients treated with Empatic had mean weight loss of 7.5 percent, compared with 1.4 percent for the placebo group — a percentage point difference of 6.1.

Empatic must still receive final approval by the FDA, but early estimates have it ready for market in 12 to 18 months.

Drugs that affect your metabolism are the top-selling prescription drugs, according to a new report by the Agency of Healthcare Research and Quality. This category of medications includes popular drugs to lower cholesterol, control diabetes, and control weight gain.

These drugs accounted for $38 billion of the $208.1 billion spent on prescription medications in the United States — or 18.3 percent of total prescription expenses by adults.

The top-selling drug in the United States, by a wide margin, is the cholesterol medication Lipitor. Lipitor is used along with diet to help lower “bad” cholesterol (LDL) and raise “good” cholesterol (HDL) in the blood. It’s part of a group of medications known as “statins”. Lipitor works by reducing the amount of cholesterol made by the liver.

You can read a summary of the study here.