Diabetes drug along with diet, exercise promotes weight loss

Washington, June 12 (ANI): A new study has shown that a commonly used diabetes drug in combination with diet and exercise helped nondiabetic, obese individuals lose over three times more weight.

The team led by Dr Michael Trautmann, a researcher with Eli Lilly in Indianapolis showed that exenatide, an injectable medication marketed as Byetta not only helps in loosing weight in people without diabetes.

"Drug therapy is considered important adjunctive treatment to diet and exercise in the successful management of obesity," Trautmann said.

"To date, however, there are few effective drugs that help obese people lose weight," he added.

In the study involving 152 obese patients with 27 men and 125 women, the subjects were randomly assigned to receive an injection of either exenatide, 10 micrograms twice a day or placebo along with a structured lifestyle modification program involving diet and exercise, for 24 weeks.

The researchers found that individuals who received exenatide lost more weight in 24 weeks.

Those who received the medication lost an average of more than 11 pounds (5.06 kg), whereas the controls lost just 3.5 pounds (1.61 kg).

The results were presented at The Endocrine Society's 91st Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. (ANI)