Anti-obesity pill showing promise

Scientists have developed an anti-obesity pill which could dramatically reduce weight.

In tests on mice the new therapy reduced their body weight by a quarter and fat mass by 42 per cent after a week - with greater effect from repeated treatment.

Follow-up experiments over the course of a month showed even more dramatic results - reductions of up to 28.1 per cent and 62.9 per cent respectively.

The researchers, whose findings are published online in Nature Chemical Biology, say further research is needed before the drug is tried on humans.

But they say the results point to a new approach for the treatment of obesity and adult-onset diabetes.

The drug is an artificial hormone made out of glucagon and glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) - natural hormones that regulate glucose metabolism.

Although these two hormones are similar in structure they differ in their chemical structure and biological function.

Previous studies have found they can suppress appetite or cause weight loss by increasing the body's calorie usage but the full spectrum of their potential as therapeutics has been unknown.

Dr Richard DiMarchi and colleagues at Indiana University in the US combined their sequences to create a new synthetic hormone that activates their receptors.

"Obesity and its associated consequences, including adult-onset diabetes, remain a primary health and economic threat for modern societies.

"Pharmacologic treatment that is efficacious and safe has yet to emerge, but the enhanced acceptance of obesity as a chronic disease has elevated the search for a suitable new therapy."

At the moment surgical interventions such as gastric bypass remain the only therapeutic options with the potential for a cure.

Dr DiMarchi said acute glucagon administration reduces food intake in animals and in humans, and some reports indicate that sustained glucagon receptor activation not only decreases food intake but also promotes weight loss.

"Pharmacological treatment of obesity using single agents has limited efficacy or presents risk for serious adverse effects," he said.

"No single agent has proven to be capable of reducing body weight more than 5 to 10 per cent in the obese population. Combination therapies using multiple drugs simultaneously may represent the preferred pharmaceutical approach to treat obesity, and there is ample precedent for combination therapy in treatment of chronic diseases.

"Here we present results that prove ... single molecules can be designed that are capable of simultaneously activating more than one mechanism to safely normalise body weight."

- INDEPENDENT