Contrave Producing Excellent Weight Loss Results

resulted in volunteers losing a minimum of ten percent of their weight

Good early results from a clinical trial to test their new weight loss medication have encouraged Orexigen Therapeutics to continue its research and development program. The new drug treatment called Contrave resulted in volunteers losing a minimum of ten percent of their weight as well as to improve their blood sugar levels and cholesterol.

The research which was done over 56 weeks apparently also showed big health improvements in patients that were in a high risk category for heart disease. For example the results showed that men and women using the drug reported significantly reduced waist circumferences, blood lipids and blood sugar levels when used on a separate group of obese diabetics.

In fact the drug Contrave is not anything new but merely a mixture of a number of other already approved medications.  It contains the antidepressant Wellbutrin, (bupropion) and a version of an opioid blocker called naltrexone which is sometimes prescribed as a treatment for addictions such as alcoholism.

For those patients who completed the whole of the 56-week clinical trials, the first trial resulted in almost 62 percent losing five percent of their body mass and at the second trial the figure rose to almost 76 percent compared to around 22 percent who were given the placebo medication. A significant number of both men and women lost over ten or fifteen percent of their overall body mass.

Mr. Dennis Kim who is the head of medical affairs for Orexigen presented the data at a meeting of the Obesity Society being held in Washington, USA, and noted that the results were very encouraging and that everything seemed to be going in the “right direction.” It is likely that if Contrave can prove to be safe it will get full FDA approval and Orexigen said that they were hoping to apply for it in the first half of 2010. Ukmedix News will keep you updated on any new developments.