Shots - Health Blog Mon September 24, 2012 Two New Drugs May
Help In Fight Against Obesity Originally published on Tue
September 25, 2012 11:59 am The Food and Drug Administration
approved two new medications this year to help obese and
overweight individuals lose weight. Diet drugs have been around
in different forms for a while, but now researchers hope one of
these two might actually help make a dent in the obesity
epidemic. Both of the drugs — Belviq and Qsymia — were approved
in July. Belviq works in a similar way to the fen-phen appetite-
suppression drug combination that was pulled from the market in
1997 because of a link to fatal heart valve problems. The new
drug, at a lower dose, has been shown to be safe. "Belviq was
developed specifically to avoid the receptor on the heart valve
which had been associated with heart damage, and there's no
evidence in our research that heart valve problems will
develop," says Dr. Donna Ryan, a researcher and obesity
specialist at the Pennington Biomedical Research C