New research into diet drugs has shown that the Lorcaserin drug also known as ADP356 has achieved some promising results in a 3 month clinical trial recently. The men and women who took part in the testing were given 20 mg daily of the diet drug lorcaserin hydrochloride made by the pharmaceutical company Arena Pharmaceuticals and nearly one third of them managed to end up with a 5% or even more weight loss. The results were presented at a yearly meeting organised by the American Diabetes Association.

In all over 450 obese participants were looked at and studied for the trial and the lead scientist said that they used over 40 different places in America for the lorcaserin testing and research. The results were good fro weight loss but also for the improvement in fasting glucose levels and lipid measures.

Lorcaserin is actually a selective agonist from the 5-HT2C serotonin group of receptors which concentrates in the hypothalamus that is a section of the brain that controls the regulation of food desire and metabolic levels. The drug company hopes that lorcaserin may be able to slow down appetite and prevent excess hunger cravings. Arena said that they are talking with the FDA in the United States about the next stage of clinical testing on obese people using lorcaserin and that they hope that they will be able to put the drug to commercial use sometime soon.

The trial was conducted with obese people ranging in BMI values from 29 to 46 and they were put randomly into 4 different groups and given either 10mg, 15mg or 20mg doses of lorcaserin and a placebo group was used too during the twelve weeks of the trial. The best results were noted in the patients who were given the 20mg dose of lorcaserin. In fact the obese patients on the higher 20mg dose lost almost twice as much weight as those on the 10mg dose.

The lorcaserin was also linked with significant improvements of BMI levels, waist and hip measurements and lower cholesterol. On the whole the drug was well tolerated and only a few side effects were noted like headache, nausea, dry mouth and urinary tract infection.