Posts Tagged ‘innovation’

Bariatric surgery is clearly the most effective option for reversing type 2 diabetes, but for many people, it’s tough to make that leap. So the quest is on to find a less intimidating treatment that delivers the same benefits. A new study in Diabetes Care points to resurfacing the duodenum as a promising possibility. The […]

Hampton Creek, the startup that sells Just Mayo, is having another dance in the news media about its truthfulness in pursuit of selling vegan mayo “guided by justice, reason, and fairness.” This time, Bloomberg is reporting that it conducted an undercover operation in 2014 to make its fake mayonnaise product seem like a hit. Bloomberg […]

We should have seen this coming. Nutrition scientists are declaring that cockroach milk will be the next hot new superfood. According to Sanchari Banerjee, Pacific beetle cockroaches produce milk crystals that possess an impressive nutritional profile: The crystals are like a complete food – they have proteins, fats and sugars. If you look into the protein sequences, […]

Targeting obesity with new treatments presents remarkable challenges. For evidence of this harsh reality, look at the sharply contrasting news this week for two potential new drugs: beloranib and setmelanotide. All work on beloranib was canceled by its developer, Zafgen. Almost simultaneously, Rhythm Pharmaceuticals published breakthrough results in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) […]

Eisai and Arena Pharmaceuticals announced this week that they received final approval from FDA for once-daily lorcaserin, which will be sold as Belviq XR for long-term obesity treatment. The real question is: what will this mean for the product, the patients who can benefit from it, and for obesity care more broadly? This approval will […]

Now in the second year since approval of liraglutide for treating obesity, a pattern is becoming clear. While other obesity drugs struggle, liraglutide gains momentum. The momentum is evident in growing prescriptions for Saxenda (the brand name for liraglutide sold by Novo Nordisk at the dose for obesity). For the second quarter of 2016, total prescriptions for Saxenda […]

At the 8th Annual Obesity Treatment and Prevention Conference in Philadelphia this week, Eileen  Seeholzer described employers investing in the health and wellness of their workforces with integrity. She was quick to express concerns about the ethics and effectiveness of narrowly-focused programs with financial penalties and incentives based on BMI. But she moved on to say: […]

FDA has just approved a new gastric drain device for the treatment of severe obesity and it’s easy to find people with strong opinions about it. The AspireAssist system consists of a small tube placed through the skin and into the stomach. It connects to a port on the surface of the skin outside the […]

Late-breaking data presented this past weekend at the Scientific Sessions of the American Diabetes Association provides a good look at the efficacy of a new combination drug treatment for obesity. The combination is 300 mg of canagliflozin (Invokana) and 15 mg of phentermine. The combination of these two drugs produced an average weight loss of 7.5% […]

A new international consensus publication this week on metabolic surgery calls for its consideration, even in people with mild obesity who have type 2 diabetes. The guidelines, published this week in Diabetes Care are regarded by many as historic. They have already been endorsed by the Obesity Society, the American Diabetes Association, and 43 other […]