Patients taking a brand new controversial weight-loss jab needs to be ready to remain on it for the remainder of their lives, consultants have warned.
Although efficient, research present those that cease semaglutide – offered in Australia underneath the model identify Ozempic – can regain a lot of the load they lose.
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence earlier this yr really helpful the treatment for adults with a physique mass index of no less than 35 and one weight-related well being situation – resembling diabetes or hypertension.
But weight problems consultants have claimed Nice’s pointers that the jab be taken for under two years will not be adequate. Professor Carel Le Roux, an professional in metabolic medication at Ulster University, stated: “These are treatments for the disease of obesity.
“What happens is, when you treat people effectively, the disease comes under control. The minute you stop the drug, the disease relapses.”
Boris Johnson talked about in his first column for the Daily Mail in June that he had tried Ozempic after seeing the way it helped a Cabinet colleague to drop some pounds.
The former prime minister stated the treatment had him “pushing aside the puddings and the second helpings – I must have been losing four or five pounds a week”.
But Mr Johnson admitted he ceased taking the drug because it appeared to make him unwell.
Professor Le Roux steered the medical career was snug prescribing the drug for situations resembling rheumatoid arthritis or hypertension and the identical needs to be the case of managing weight problems.
But he added: “One of the most important questions we ask patients now is, ‘Are you prepared to take this treatment for the rest of your life?’.
“If you’re not able to do that, you should stop because then we are probably at risk of doing more harm than we are doing good.
“So it’s important to re-frame this as a disease that we are treating and that these are disease-modifying drugs, not weight-loss drugs.”
Professor John Wilding, who leads medical analysis into weight problems, diabetes and endocrinology on the University of Liverpool, stated: “We do have to think about these medicines as long term – despite the fact that, for Nice at the moment, it’s only two years of treatment.
“We do know obesity is a chronic disease and we would never think of just giving somebody a diabetes drug or blood pressure drug for two years and then stopping it because at that point the disease will recur.”
Research outcomes – revealed final yr within the journal Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism – on individuals who stopped semaglutide revealed they regained two-thirds of their misplaced weight over the subsequent yr.
Source: www.perthnow.com.au
