Scientists identify drug for obese people to lose weight by reducing appetite

Good news for all the obese people who want to lose weight as scientists found a new drug that could help genetically obese persons to reduce their appetite that in turn reduces their weight.

It is estimated that 2-6% of all obese people have mutations in one of their appetite genes which gives them strong genetic predisposition in developing obesity known as monogenic obesity. These people experience more hunger and will not get feel saturated.

Obesity Problems

Monogenic obese people do not respond well to the present obesity treatments. They can lose weight by changing diets and with the help of the surgery, which is limited to short period and long term effect will be poor as they fail to maintain the weight loss through diet.

A medicine called liraglutide, a modified form of appetite-inhibiting hormone GLP-1, which is naturaaly secreted in the intestine after food intake will be useful to help those obese people by curbing appetite. This was found by the researchers at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark.

The study about liraglutide was published in the journal Cell Metabolism which highlights that obese people fell less hunger and can lose around six percent of their body weight in four months after using the medicine.

For the study 14 persons with obesity caused by pathogenic mutations in MC4R gene and 28 people with obesity without mutations were examined.

The people in the two groups were given medicine for four months with same diet and same levels of exercise.

People with monogenic obesity lost 7 kg of their body weight compared to 6 kgs of the people with common obesity.

The medicine liraglutide mechanism of action is to inhibit the appetite by stimulating the specific appetite receptor in the brain, that does not function the people with a particular type of obesity. It was found that the medicine has appetite-inhibiting effect and will affect the appetite in another way.

An analogue of natural GLP-1 hormone is already available and with this new study it paves the way to treat the most common form of genetically caused obesity as patients do not respond to the existing treatments.