HMN 2025: What are the Anti-obesity medicines related to weight rebound post-treatment

Patients pharmaceuticals to assist them drop pounds might expertise a rebound in weight achieve after halting their prescription, finds a meta-analysis published in BMC Medicine.

The study, which analyzes knowledge for sufferers receiving weight reduction medication throughout 11 randomized trials, means that whereas the quantity of weight regain varies relying on the particular drug, there’s a broad pattern in related weight regain after the course of medicine concluded.

Six anti-obesity medicines (AOMs) have been permitted by the US FDA to be used in helping with weight reduction, together with orlistat, phentermine-topiramate, and semaglutide. Glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1)—a therapeutic developed to help with diabetes—has additionally more and more been prescribed to assist sufferers drop pounds. However, current research have recommended that sufferers prescribed AOMs might regain weight within the months after stopping taking these medicines.

Xiaoling Cai, Linong Ji, and colleagues carried out a meta-analysis of 11 research from world wide investigating weight change in sufferers after they stopped taking AOMs.

Overall, the authors analyzed knowledge from 1,574 individuals in remedy teams and 893 in management teams. Weight change was measured by adjustments in physique weight and BMI after stopping medicine.

Of the 11 research included within the meta-analysis, six targeted on GLP-1 receptor agonists (RAs); one targeted on GLP-1 and GLP twin Ras; one study targeted on orlistat; two research on phentermine-topiramate; and one study on naltrexone-bupropion.

The authors managed for various contributing components, together with medicine sort, the presence of diabetes, and the presence or absence of life-style adjustments like weight loss program or train.

Their evaluation discovered that AOMs have been related to important weight reduction whereas getting used, adopted by weight regain beginning eight weeks after AOM discontinuation, with weight regain then persevering with for a mean of 20 weeks earlier than plateauing.

Weight regain diverse with follow-up, with study individuals experiencing important intervals of weight regain at eight, 12, and 20 weeks after AOM discontinuation.

The quantity of weight regained trusted a number of components, together with the kind of medicine taken by individuals and the consistency of their life-style change. For instance, individuals who accomplished a 36-week remedy with tirzepatide, a commercially obtainable GLP-1 RA, regained nearly half the burden beforehand misplaced after switching to a placebo.

The authors notice the meta-analysis didn’t embrace research of life-style interventions and bariatric surgical procedure, decreasing the diploma to which completely different weight reduction approaches could possibly be in contrast throughout the context of the review.

They additionally notice that weight regain has been reported with different weight reduction strategies, similar to gastric bypass and vertical banded gastroplasty.