Arena Pharmaceuticals Going For FDA OK With Lorcaserin

It is unusual that three diet drugs come onto the market at the same time

Arena Pharmaceuticals Inc has initiated procedures to gain approval for sale and marketing from the Food & Drug Administration in America for its experimental obesity medication lorcaserin. Arena which is located in San Diego released data from its latest clinical trials of the lorcaserin drug which boosted their stock market share price by almost 3 percent. There are a number of new obesity medications which are likely to gain approval over the next 3 or 4 years and so lorcaserin will be need to show good results in both safety and effectiveness for it to firstly get full FDA approval and secondly to be commercially viable.

Other medications that the FDA is likely to give its approval to at some point are Qnexa from Vivus Inc. and Contrave32 from Orexigen Therapeutics Inc. It is unusual that three diet drugs come onto the market at more or less the same time and therefore there will be strong competition between them and this means the investors around the world are looking very carefully at the clinical data before deciding which one to back financially.

Probably the frontrunner is Qnexa which we have already written about that Ukmedix News because the clinical data shows that men and women who used it lost the most weight.  It also has an advantage in that it is simple to take with one tablet being required daily. It is unlikely that all three medications will end up being as popular as the presently available weight loss medications Reductil and Xenical.

The market for weight loss medications is extremely lucrative as obesity is increasing all over the world in wealthier nations which can therefore afford to buy the drugs. Obesity is second only to smoking as being the most preventable cause of early death in America and Europe.