Lorcaserin Information

A third of adult population of the USA suffers from adiposity, which provokes myriads of diseases. The most serious among them are diabetes and cardio vascular diseases. In world scale about 400 million adults suffer from adiposity, and, it is supposed, that by 2015 this figure will be enlarged to 700 mln people. The pharmaceutical companies understand that creation of a preparation for weight reduction opens for them huge prospects, but at the moment their attempts to create a safe, reliable and really working preparation have not resulted successfully.

Most close to success has come the combined preparation known under the name fen-phen on the background of which the weight of the patients decreased on 30 pounds (1 pound = 453,6 g) in a year, and thus, they did not feel hungry. However the preparation possessed such serious by-effects, as disturbance of work of mitral valves and a pulmonary hypertensia, and in this connection has been withdrawn from sales in 1997. The manufacturer of fen-phen the American company Wyeth has paid 18,7 bln USD under the claims shown by patients in court.

Now the company Arena Pharmaceuticals works over a preparation lorcaserin hydrochlorid which stimulates serotonin development as well as fen-phen, but does not cause by-effects, characteristic for fen-phen, that is confirmed by results of 6-month’s test of the preparation on safety of application. The research of the preparation will last during 1,5 years. In the second phase of clinical research at the patients receiving within 12 weeks maximum permissible doses of lorcaserin, the reduction of weight of a body on the average for 7,9 pounds became perceptible. The 2-year clinical research of the preparation with participation of 3,2 thousand patients will allow to obtain data about, whether the weight reduction can last longer.

Now in the USA only 2 preparations for treatment of adiposity are approved by FDA, which are not so effective and are badly sold. These are the preparations Meridia of company Abbott and Xenical of the company Roche. The company GlaxoSmithkline produces a non-prescribed version of Xenical. In the beginning of 2007 FDA has not given out the permission to the company Sanofi-Aventis for application of the preparation Acomplia because of undesirable by-effects at patients in the form of suicidal ideas and depressions.

If Lorcaserin will show good results in clinical tests, probably, by 2010 it will be approved by FDA.