Friday, March 30, 2012

Blog #10 Obesity drugs need heart studies, U.S. advisers say


As it widely publicized obesity is among the top killers in today’s society. Obesity is a medical condition in which an excess amount of body fat has accumulated to the point of having a negative effect on the health. It can lead to diabetes and other health problems such as heart disease. Because this particular medical condition is becoming more prevalent than ever before, more medical drugs are being released in hopes of decreasing the number of cases. With new medical drugs and simply with drugs in general comes the opportunity for more health risks. Anti-obesity drugs have a history of increasing the risk of cardiovascular issues. For this very reason, according to the article, U.S drug advisers feel as if heart safety studies should be required for the new obesity drugs being released. Advisory panels have already begun to take votes on whether or not regulators should make companies conduct heart impact studies in order to sell their drugs in the U.S. The advisory panel to the Food and Drug Administration voted 17-6 in favor of doing so. However, panelist were split when deciding if companies could do a meta-analysis of existing data prior to approval or if they would have to do a full clinical trial before the drugs could even reach the market. Most of the panelists were more in favor of doing the pre-approval trial and this was most likely partly due to the process of conducting the full clinical trials would be more costly and require more time as well. Society believes that losing weight has the positive effects on the heart, which it does, but according to recent trials on obesity drugs some actually increase heart risks. I feel as if all obesity drugs should have to go through the full clinical trials prior to being put on the shelves for people to buy. The idea of rather being safe than sorry definitely supports my reason. It doesn’t make much sense to put out a drug that is supposed to improve health in some way but ironically is doing the very opposite. Even though not all of the obesity drugs are responsible for doing so, just the fact that they have the opportunity to do so is enough to want to ensure that they don’t.


1 comment:

Unknown said...

Thanks for this post, it must be useful for all who suffer in obesity, it's really informative and interesting post, now a days obesity spread in a epidemic form, Obesity in the US has risen sharply since 1980s.