Health
Diabetes Drug’s Happy Side Effect: Weight Loss
(Rogelio V. Solis/AP Photo)
(The Washington Post) – A study in the New England Journal of Medicine reports that taking daily shots of liraglutide (marketed as Saxenda) can help overweight or obese patients lose weight — a lot of it. Patients taking the medication lost an average of more than 12 pounds, twice as much as those on a placebo, after 56 weeks.
Liraglutide was originally developed to treat Type 2 diabetes, but researchers found that in higher doses it could promote weight loss. Xavier Pi-Sunyer, the study’s lead author and director of the obesity research at Columbia University, said it works by mimicking the effects of a hormone that makes you feel full.
