EFN

Arena Pharmaceuticals Inc. announced Monday that they have developed an obesity treatment pill called lorcaserin. In late stage studies, the results were very promising

The long-awaited results come from an analysis of 3,182 patients in a clinical trial called Bloom, which followed people who used Arena’s lorcaserin pill twice a day or a placebo for two years. The report discovered that patients lost an average of 5.8 percent of their body weight if they took Arena’s drug, compared with 2.2 percent of their weight in the placebo group.

Most weight loss experts don’t view anything under 5% weight loss after one year of treatment to be clinically significant for patients.

The small San Diego company stated the drug was well-tolerated by patients, with the most common side effects
being headaches and upper respiratory tract infections.