Contrave – New Weight Loss Drug Coming

It appears a new weight-loss drug could be coming relatively soon. And it does a smidge better than lifestyle management of nutrition and activity alone.
An FDA advisory committee has voted 13-7 that the modest weight-loss benefits of an investigational combination of naltrexone and bupropion (Contrave) outweigh the drug’s blood pressure risk.
But the most impressive improvements in blood pressure and weight loss were seen among patients taking placebo who achieved more than a 5% weight loss, suggesting the lifestyle management of nutrition and activity is the best option for obese patients to lower their blood pressure.
While the medical community tries to decide if food addiction is a real thing (yawn, stretch, eye roll) it just so happens that Contrave is what? Contrave combines an antidepressant and an anti-addiction drug, both of which have been used individually for 20 years — naltrexone for opioid addiction and alcohol dependence and bupropion for depression and smoking cessation.
Well I’ll be darned! Why oh WHY would researchers look at anti-addiction drugs for a simple thing like overeating? Hint–because it’s NOT a simple problem of easy access to food and overeating.
Patients on the naltrexone/bupropion combination lost more weight than those in the placebo group, and more than 30% lost at least 5% of their body weight. So if you started at 200 pounds you lost at least 10 pounds. Wow! That is UNBELIEVABLE! 10 whole pounds if you weigh 200! I bet those people felt smokin hot after that loss.
Ya ya, I know the research, there IS a medical benefit for almost any weight loss but it really begins about 5% of weight lost and really starts to shine about 10% weight lost. Ya, I got it.
In one trial where patients taking naltrexone/bupropion were compared with those undergoing a lifestyle modification program, the difference between the groups was small.
Even so? Most docs and medical overseers of weight management are pretty excited that this drug combo has gotten past this review committee. I don’t blame them. Their resources known to them for lifestyle intervention is scant and most really DO want to help their patients but are frustrated as hell at HOW to do it. They have seen, repeatedly, chronically, people try and fail 100s of times to lose weight so many docs have become all but depressed over even mentioning weight loss to their patients.
“It is nice to have a medication that can help those who are watching their diet and boosting activity lose the weight that thus far has been a slow process,” said dietitian Connie Diekman, director of University Nutrition ?at Washington University in St Louis. “This is one more option in the tool chest to deal with the obesity issue.”
“Finally!” said Robert F. Kushner, MD, professor of Medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “I fully endorse the panel’s vote. The key will be to educate physicians on how to best prescribe the medication — identify patients who will benefit from the medication and to accompany it with lifestyle and behavioral recommendations.”
Paul L. Doering, a pharmacy professor at the University of Florida, said he doesn’t “doubt for a minute that this drug will be wildly successful, at least at first,” adding, “Time will ultimately tell if it is a good drug or not. In the meantime, I’m going to let somebody else be the first to take it.”
Source: http://tinyurl.com/37tfgdo