effective diet pill, but hard to bear
A combination of diet pill that may be available soon in Australia, helps overweight people lose pounds and maintain the loss, new research suggests.
But the bad news is that the drug has unpleasant side effects after in the Medical Journal of Australia published study.
The only tablet medication is a combination of phentermine, an appetite suppressant, and topiramate epilepsy drugs.
The drug was approved in the USA for use by overweight adults in 2012.
A team of researchers at the Austin Hospital in Melbourne tested the drug on 103 patients.
Forty-one of 61, stopped taking the pill, said she stopped because of side effects.
: Depression, dry mouth and tingling, burning, or tingling of the skin.
The average weight of the group was reduced by 13 kg in the first phase of treatment, patients have a very low energy diet followed.
For the 30 patients who completed the study 22 months, the average weight of 6.7 kg at the end of the phase of the low calorie diet reduces the time of its last observation.
Lead researcher Joseph Proietto of phentermine-topiramate therapy is not well tolerated, but it was effective in humans maintain their weight if they had thrown the kilos.
"The aim of our study is to help our experiences with the application of the combination at doses up to describe people to get their weight after losing," said Professor Proietto.
"Not to lose weight, drugs do not need to lose weight.
"You need to get drugs from biological fact that after people lose weight, be very hungry."
The only drug tablet was not yet approved by the Therapeutic Goods Administration for weight loss in Australia.
But both phentermine and topiramate are in Australia and doctors prescribe these drugs for overweight adults "off-label", a practice in which doctors use a drug for a purpose that is approved by the by the TGA, said Professor Proietto.
The Food and Drug Administration approved the combination therapy for weight loss in 2012, which means an application to the TGA could be expected soon, said Professor Proietto.
However, Professor Proietto said it advantages in separately with the available drugs Australia.
"Although we use for an indication, the advantage of the individual drugs that we have to increase the dose up and down individually, so that we adapt to each patient.
"There are people who get one side but not the other effects, and vice versa."
Less than 11 million adults in Australia, 63 percent of the population is overweight or obese in 2011-12, according to the Australia Bureau of Statistics.
Lap Band Surgery Meanwhile, another study in the Medical Journal of Australia was published, was so successful have received for those that offer free treatment in a public hospital and for those who pay thousands of dollars for access to a private hospital.
"There was no doubt about the motivation of obese patients whose operation is fully funded," the authors write.
"But this study support the hypothesis that patients who rely on public health care in order to obtain sufficient intrinsic motivation upright to lose weight."
© 2014 AAP
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