Weight Loss & Weight Loss Drugs - Review
Pharmacotherapeutics - weight loss drugs
- can promote modest weight loss and maintenance in obese people. Reports
of infrequent, but serious, adverse events (for example, pulmonary hypertension,
severe cardiac valvular damage) caused earlier agents (fenfluramine, dexfenfluramine)
to be taken off the market and continue to plague some agents that are
still available. Worldwide reports of deaths related to the weight loss
drug sibutramine prompted Italy to suspend sales and authorities in France,
Germany, and England to review the drug. Consumer groups are urging the
United States to remove it from the market. Although the weight loss drug
orlistat, which blocks fat absorption, has fewer safety concerns, it also
has common, annoying, and socially unacceptable side effects, such as
faecal incontinence and flatulence. Because of continued concerns about
adverse effects and the lack of evidence about long term safety, pharmacological
treatments should be used as adjuncts to strategies for changing lifestyle
only for selected patients (those with a body mass index and obesity related
co-morbidities) after consideration of the trade-off between potential
benefits and harms.
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