Ask any of your friends, and it’s likely many of them have dieted at some point in their lives. But don’t stop there. Of those friends, how many were successful? It’s likely only a few, or maybe none, at least in the long-term.

In today’s culture, dieting is a hot topic, and the diet food industry is a multi-billion-dollar industry, but when it comes down to it, many diets just don’t seem to work.

Many people dislike the concept of dieting altogether. Parents of teenage girls, for example, cringe at the word. And others simply find it difficult to structure eating habits in such a specific way. The bottom line is that exercise and healthy eating, whether or not it is part of a specific diet, are both necessary in order to stay healthy.

The latest statistics show that more than 78 million (one-third) of American adults and almost 12.5 million (17 percent) of American youths are obese. The term “obese” specifically refers to an excessive amount of adipose (fat) tissue. This is measured in terms of what is called the Body Mass Index or BMI, which compares a person’s weight relative to his or her height. A BMI of 30 or more is considered obese.

So, what’s the big deal? Why does BMI matter? It matters because obesity causes or contributes to many of the leading causes of death among adults in the U.S.—namely, heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and certain types of cancer. In addition, excessive weight can lead to acid reflux, painful joints, sleep apnea and urinary incontinence, among other unpleasant conditions.

By shedding pounds and achieving a healthy weight, most people can decrease the number and/or dosages of medications they’re taking, they can get around more easily and comfortably, they can breathe better, and they actually save money on prescription costs and grocery bills.

So what happens if you try to eat the healthiest, but just can’t drop the pounds? Or you feel so overweight that you’re physically not able to exercise the way you need to?

In addition to dietitians, counselors and life coaches who can walk you through the steps to a healthier lifestyle, there are also support groups for people who may need a little extra motivation to stick with their weight-loss efforts.

Another option for people with a BMI of 35 or above is weight-loss surgery, also known as bariatric surgery. Although this is becoming more common across the country, the most recent data show that only 0.05 percent of people who are eligible for bariatric surgery actually choose to take advantage of this effective treatment option.

The two most popular procedures, gastric banding and gastric bypass, are both considered safe and effective, especially in terms of keeping weight off in the long-term. Neither of these surgical procedures actually removes any fat or tissue from the body, but rather, each acts as a tool to assist the person in his or her weight-loss efforts. With both procedures, this is done by creating a rather small stomach pouch into which the food enters upon swallowing, thus reducing the amount of food a person is able to eat at any given mealtime. With the gastric bypass, there is also a reduction in the amount of nutrients (calories) that are absorbed by the body, which is why the gastric bypass procedure is even more potent than gastric banding.

Regardless of which weight-loss procedure a patient undergoes, bariatric surgery is not an easy to fix to the weight-loss problem. Nutrition counseling and support groups are an important part of the process following surgery, as it remains the patient’s responsibility to exercise and eat a healthy diet as the basis for a healthy weight.

A free information session for people interested in learning more about bariatric surgery is held twice each month at Martha Jefferson Hospital. To register, or for more information, call Health Connection at 654-7009.

Dr. Katherine Trahan and registered nurse and bariatric coordinator Lisa Slate are at Martha Jefferson Bariatric Care Center.

Article source: http://www2.dailyprogress.com/lifestyles/2012/may/20/vital-signs-options-weight-loss-ar-1925731/

Melanie: All right!

Me: Are you able to discuss these magical powers, or are they proprietary — a trade secret, like the formula behind the nooks and crannies in Thomas’ English Muffins?

Melanie: I am free to discuss anything relating to the product and how it fits. We value our quality and put a lot of effort into every single pair!

Me: Swell. When I first started wearing Levi’s, I was 25 years old, and wore a size 34 waist. Now, I am 60, and have thickened like the plot of a bad whodunit. I am basically shaped like Huckleberry Hound — not big-waisted so much as waistless, an amorphous quasi-cylinder of goo. I have gained 20 pounds, yet I STILL wear a size 34 waist in Levi’s jeans! When I am wearing your product, I am apparently the svelte young man I was at 25, with a tight 34-inch waist, though my my kazoo-like voice unfortunately has not changed. Are you still with me, Melanie?

Melanie: Mm-hmm.

Me: For some reason, though, when I buy dress pants from other companies, I find I need a 36-inch waist. So I tried 36-inch Levi’s, but they were so loose that when I walked across the room, my pants slowly fell down to my ankles, unassisted. I performed this act several times for my family, to their profound amusement. So, now I’m back to my size 34 Levi’s, and feeling young and manly again. Can you explain, scientifically how Levi’s accomplishes this?

Melanie:

Me: Now, everyone knows that ladies’ sizes have changed over the years in deference to the frail vanities of the fairer, weaker sex, whose sensibilities presumably would be shattered if they were forced to confront the fact that they might have gained a pound or two since the time they starved themselves for an entire year so they could squeeze into a sequined white dress that would fit exactly one day in their lives, after the first but prior to the second helping of hors d’oeuvres. Women are like that, and we love and cherish them for it, and the dress industry has accommodated them with a patently fraudulent — and arguably patronizing — size-deflation system. Over the last 20 years, my wife has gone from a size 4 dress to a size 0 dress, without having lost a pound.

Melanie: I do know that is happening, yes.

Me: In women’s clothing.

Melanie: Yes.

Me:
Yet we both know this cannot possibly be the case with Levi’s, since men, being men, are completely without vanity. We both know that Levi Strauss would never insult men in this preposterous, emasculating way.

Melanie:

Me:
My editor, Tom the Butcher, has an even more amazing story of the restorative, slimming rejuvenating powers of Levi’s jeans. Though middle-aged like me, Tom plays tennis and eats more nutritious foods than I do — he is an ardent proselytizer for a healthy lifestyle, so much so that I have considered jamming an umbrella up his wazoo, opening it (the umbrella), and hanging his slim and muscular middle-aged body by the handle from a chandelier. But my point is, though Tom has not gained or lost a pound in the last 20 years, he reports that he has recently gone from size 32 to size 31 waist in Levi’s jeans. He got skinnier! How can we explain this amazing phenomenon?

Melanie:

Me: I am taking my pants off now, Melanie.

Melanie: Oh, my.

Me: Please remain calm. I think you know what is about to happen.

Melanie:

Me: I am applying a tape measure to the allegedly 34-inch waist. And the measurement is actually .?.?. hang on a second .?.?. 36 and a half inches.

Melanie:

Me: Maybe my tape measure is broken.

Melanie: Maybe!

Article source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/weight-loss-via-levi-strauss-genes-pants-are-coming-off/2012/05/18/gIQAKBhOZU_story.html

• A recent study by Duke University estimates that 42 percent of Americans will be obese by 2030, up from about 34 percent today. Contrary to other reports, the epidemic is getting worse, not better. Will we all become obese?
• A recent story in the New York Times exposes how dangerous obese airline passengers can be, with engineers describing how seat belts may not restrain obese people. In a crash, obese people may “blast through” seat belts and into other passengers. Have you seen the films of normal-size test dummies crashing into dashboards? Imagine getting hit by a 250- to 300-pound linebacker at jet speed.
• The CDC estimates that obesity costs us about $150 billion per year today, almost 10 percent of health care costs. It’s the second leading cause of preventable death in the country, just behind smoking, and it is gaining. That cost is projected to increase to over500 billion.

As a result of these alarms, we hear lots of opinions and proposals about what to do. Almost all involve public health initiatives, government programs and new laws. The CDC, Department of Health, Surgeon General and First Lady are all on the job, brainstorming and leading us. Yale’s David Katz, M.D., Founding Director of the Prevention Research Center, praises public/private collaborative efforts to promote better nutrition in the marketplace. Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker imagines a possible future with a government-mandated diet. I’m very much in favor of community leaders taking us in the right direction and government action, such as generating laws that the FDA and Public Health Departments enforce, as they do today with other matters. However, let me propose a different solution.

You can solve the obesity epidemic. Yourself. Now. You don’t need to wait on others. However, you must be overweight — not as badly as I was, but more than is healthy. If you’re not sure what that is, ask your doctor. From this paragraph forward, I’m not addressing the shrinking minority who are not overweight, but the majority of us who are unhealthfully overweight.

While I am very healthy now, at my ideal body weight for over 25 years, it wasn’t always so. At one time, I was obese, more than 300 pounds. And while I resented anyone sticking his or her nose in my business about my weight, I didn’t like being overweight. The truth is, there wasn’t a day that went by that I didn’t want to lose that weight, even if I didn’t admit it. Virtually, none of you want this. You hate it. I know this because today, I specialize in therapy for overweight and obese people. When you are alone with me, regardless of the front you put up, you tell me you’d love to solve the problem if you could. You can. And when you do, you’ll have done the most important thing that anyone can do to solve the obesity epidemic. If everyone who wanted to solve his or her weight problem got her or his wish, there would be no obesity epidemic. Go after what you want for yourself. Don’t worry about the epidemic. Focus on yourself.

While you may not know a lot about the behavioral medicine I teach, you know that changing your behavior permanently is the answer to your weight problem — getting your permanent eating habits to conform to a pattern that will cause a healthy weight. In the past, you’ve tried diets and giving up what you like to eat and the way you like to eat, and perhaps lost a lot of weight doing it, but it didn’t last. Don’t give up. You just have not learned enough yet. You’re not finished yet.

When you change yourself, you’ll change the world. The change in you will affect those around you. You’ll be helping others just by modeling and leading the way. The improvement is contagious, just like the problem. That’s how you’ll be solving the obesity epidemic. When you make yourself better as a way of helping the whole world get better, you are committing yourself to something greater than yourself, and this will tap a power greater than yourself. To solve the obesity epidemic, the most important thing you can do is to solve your own weight problem for your own reasons.

This is not to say that I am against social and political action to change the culture, especially when it comes to the children. They are at our mercy, subject to the training and conditioning of the culture and marketplace that is working hard to train them to consume as much as possible. The habits we develop as kids stay with us, and it’s better to learn good habits than to try to unlearn bad ones. So, we need to regulate and rein in the food industry and support institutional health training. Also, I would love it if it were easier to eat healthfully in restaurants. I’d eat out more. So, I am happy to see the laws passed that require them to disclose the nutrition info, and happy to see them responding to the public demands for healthier offerings.

So, be active socially and politically to change the culture if you like doing that. It will help reverse the obesity epidemic. But you don’t have to do that if that’s not your thing. Solving the problem in you is many times more important and effective to that end. You can solve the obesity epidemic. Yourself. Now. You don’t need to wait on others.

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Article source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-anderson-ma-lmhc/weight-of-the-nation_b_1517288.html

The surgery she had in 2005 triggered a genetic mutation to take over her metabolism and prevent her body from processing proteins. The elementary school music teacher had wasted away to 88 pounds by the time she died in April. She was 43.

While a gastric bypass can help severely obese people maintain a healthier weight and in some cases even cure diabetes, the surgery has its own set of risks. The death rate from the actual surgery is less than 1 percent, but complications can occur later, ranging from calcium malabsorption to the rare genetic disorder that killed Lane.

Gastric bypass risks

Possible long-term side effects:
– Permanent damage to the nervous system.
– Diseases of malnutrition, such as pellagra, beriberi and kwashiorkor, caused by a lack of protein.

– Hernias.

– Strictures, or narrowing of the areas where the intestine is joined

Death rates
Within the first 30 days:

– 0.2 percent among those who had laparoscopic Roux-en-Y, the most frequently performed gastric bypass.
– 2.1 percent among the small percentage of patients who had open Roux-en-Y gastric bypass, a more invasive procedure.

Long term
Two studies are under way by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, but data have not yet been released.

Death rates for other types of gastric bypass surgeries were not included in the government-sponsored study, which involved 4,776 adults.
Source: National Institutes of Health

“I want people to understand the risks involved,” said her husband, Randy Lane, who had hoped to be celebrating his sixth wedding anniversary this month.

The surgery, performed on about 220,000 Americans a year, does more than restrict what someone can eat — it also changes how the digestive tract absorbs food. Patients have to maintain special diets, take supplements and be closely monitored.

Yet doctors really don’t have other effective options for treating morbid obesity, generally defined as being 100 or more pounds overweight. Hilary Lane weighed more than 300 pounds.

Lifestyle changes, such as diet and exercise, are rarely successful for these patients without surgical intervention. Prescription drugs have been yanked off the market because of adverse — sometimes deadly — side effects. No new diet drug has received U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval in more than a decade, although the agency’s recommending committee has endorsed two medicines, Qnexa and lorcaserin, that could become available later this year.

For Hilary Lane, gastric bypass surgery seemed to be the only option. No one knew then to warn her about a rare and difficult-to-detect genetic disorder called acquired urea cycle failure.

Her problems began about four years after the gastric bypass surgery. Doctors at Vanderbilt University Medical Center were perplexed. No nutritional equation worked because her body was turning protein into ammonia and her liver was failing to convert it to urea. Her body could not excrete the toxin.

Cynthia Le Mons, executive director of the National Urea Cycle Disorders Foundation, believes the complication that led to Hilary Lane’s death is not as rare as doctors think. She knows of six women who have developed urea cycle failure after gastric bypass surgery since 2007. Five of the six died.

“That’s just the tip of the iceberg,” Le Mons said. “If we know about it, it’s just a microcosm of what is going on.”

The surgery requirements

Although Hilary Lane was no couch potato, she had been heavy since elementary school, said her sister, Catherine Parks McAfee.

“She was the most active overweight person you have ever seen,” McAfee said. “She was never sedentary. She was diving coach of the Sequoia Swim Club for 25 years and a music teacher at a Metro elementary school, always going, doing choirs and private lessons for piano and all kinds of things.”

Hilary Lane met her husband on Match.com, and their first face-to-face encounter was at a Nashville, Tenn.-area restaurant on a winter evening.

“She had a magic smile,” he said. “Her eyes were incredible.”

She had not had the surgery yet, but her weight didn’t keep him from asking her out again.

“I’m not really a vain person,” Randy Lane said. “Outward appearances don’t really affect me. I go more for personality, intellect. You have to be fun.”

The following summer, she told him about her plans to have the surgery. It took place the year before their wedding.

“It was probably the best day of her life,” McAfee said. “I’d say she felt like a princess. She was where she had always wanted to be.”

The first years of the marriage were wonderful. Hilary Lane enjoyed planning weekend camping trips and being close to nature. The couple loved spending mornings on a bend of the Harpeth River near their home about 30 miles west of Nashville.

“We would sit there in our chairs, drink coffee, read the paper and watch the river float by,” Randy Lane said.

The health complications

The first indication of a problem was the continued weight loss. Later, the ammonia spikes interfered with her thought processes and caused personality changes.

“At first they tested to see if maybe she was throwing up,” McAfee said. “They didn’t know. She had no signs of that. Every time she was in the hospital, there would be more and more questions — almost like we were the first case ever.”

Hilary Lane ended up in the intensive care unit at the Vanderbilt hospital a year and a half ago, but she recovered. Then she got sick again.

“Last fall, she just started deteriorating,” Randy Lane said. “It was a cruel, cruel disease. You can’t do anything about it. You just watched her get weaker and weaker. When her ammonia level would go up, things didn’t make sense to her. She hurt all the time from last September until she passed. She was in constant pain.”

The genetic disorder, which typically affects children, involves a deficiency of an enzyme that removes ammonia from the bloodstream. Eating protein causes ammonia spikes, but when people with the disorder don’t eat protein, their bodies begin breaking down lean muscle mass.

“We were in this dilemma,” he said. “She would take nutrients but her ammonia level would go up, and to get her ammonia level down, of course, she couldn’t take any nutrients. That’s the cycle she got into.”

The family did not learn until shortly before her death that she had acquired urea cycle failure.

The genetic disorder

Medical literature has few documented cases about gastric bypass surgery triggering the genetic mutation into action, according to both Dr. Ronald H. Clements, Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s director of bariatric surgery and Le Mons, who heads the foundation for the disorder.

Testing for the mutation before the surgery is a challenge because more than 300 mutations have been linked to the disorder, Le Mons said.

“Those are just the known ones,” she said. “We have kids and adults coming out of the woodwork with new mutations all the time.”

Every medical decision involves a risk-benefit analysis, Clements said, and patients are warned about complications from gastric bypass surgery. However, it has proven to work better than anything else to help morbidly obese people maintain a healthy weight.

Even those who are able to lose 100 pounds without surgery often gain it back.

“I’ve had some patients lose 500 pounds over their lifetime, gaining and losing, gaining and losing that same 100 pounds or so,” he said. “Bariatic surgery is absolutely not the perfect fix-all, be-all, everything is going to be lovely afterward. That’s not true either. There are risks associated with the operation — absolutely no question about that.”

Clements said anyone who has the surgery requires long-term follow-up. Bone density is something doctors watch.

“When you do a gastric bypass, you decrease the absorption of fat,” he said. “Vitamin D has to be dissolved in fat before your body can absorb it. So when you cut down on fat absorption to be able to lose weight, you also cut down on the ability to absorb vitamin D. The area of the intestine that we bypass in the gastric bypass is also largely responsible for calcium absorption.”

But the benefits of the surgery far outweigh the risks, Clements said.

Randy Lane wants people to realize that those risks are real.

“I’m not mad at the surgeon that did it,” he said. “I’m not mad at Vanderbilt. I’m not mad at anybody. This is just something that happened. But there’s got to be a Ph.D. out there that can figure this out.”

Types of gastric bypass surgery

– Adjustable gastric band: Works by decreasing food intake. Less invasive than other surgeries but has a higher failure rate. A small bracelet-like band is put around the top of the stomach. Its size can be inflated or deflated with a circular balloon filled with saline solution inside the bracelet.

– Roux-en-Y: Makes the stomach, duodenum and upper intestine no longer have contact with food. A pouch is created that sends food directly to the small intestine.

– Duodenal switch: Removes a large portion of the stomach, reroutes food away from much of the small intestine, and changes how the body absorbs calories. The surgery produces significant weight loss, but it has increased chances for long-term problems, including anemia and osteoporosis.

– Vertical sleeve gastrectomy: Removes most of the stomach, which may decrease a hormone that prompts appetite. Traditionally done as the first stage of a duodenal switch, but some patients lost weight without the second surgery.

Article source: http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/story/2012-05-15/gastric-bypass-surgery-death/54970528/1

Article source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2012/05/14/prweb9495954.DTL

Article source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/05/11/BUBJ1OEMUC.DTL

The 18-4 vote on Thursday came after the FDA’s advisory committee on endocrinological and metabolic drugs weighed evidence on the drug’s safety record, presented by Lorcaserin’s sponsor, Arena Pharmaceuticals, which developed Lorcaserin in partnership with Eisai Co. Panel members weighed Lorcaserin’s effectiveness in promoting weight loss in obese patients against concerns that the drug might damage heart valves, as well as about increased rates of breast and brain tumors in animals given higher than the planned dose. Concerns over those issues were enough to prompt the FDA last October to send Arena Pharmaceuticals back to gather more data.

The advisory panel’s FDA staff, which reviews and analyzes new data in advance of the meeting, were generally positive about the data presented by Arena. A report prepared for the advisory panel found that the drug’s feared incidental effects on the heart are “unlikely at the proposed clinical dose of Lorcaserin.” The report acknowledges the higher rate of benign fibroadenoma seen in rats administered the drug, but concludes the rates of cancersseen in rats are “indicative of negligeable risk in human subjects.”

• Also

• 

  Qnexa approval may pave way for another obesity drug

• 

  Obesity in U.S. projected to grow, though pace slows: CDC study

• 

  Nation’s obesity problem demands sweeping changes, panel says

• 

  HBO’s ‘The Weight of the Nation’ is a wake-up call for America

The panel and the FDA are working against the backdrop of a rising sense of urgency over Americans’ weight. With the nation’s obesity rate among adults now standing at 35.7% and projected to grow to 42% by 2030, the search for ways to staunch the obesity epidemic brought 1,200 obesity experts toWashington, D.C., earlier this week for a planning summit.

The FDA’s criteria for the effectiveness of drugs it considers viable reflect the agency’s urgency to provide obese Americans some pharmacological help. A candidate for approval must demonstrate that more than 35% of subjects taking it lose more than 5% of their body weight, and that weight loss is significantly greater for subjects taking the pill than for those on the placebo.

A clinical trial of Lorcaserin published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that two-thirds of patients on the drug lost 5% of their body weight, while a third lost at least 10%. After a year of taking the drug as a supplement to diet and exercise, subjects’ average weight loss was 17 to 18 pounds.

But the FDA’s safety criteria in considering weight-loss drugs have been much stiffer. The agency is acutely aware that any weight-loss product it approves will be broadly marketed and taken by a potentially vast population of patients already beset by obesity-related conditions. Given those circumstances, any hint of a drug-related safety problem could quickly mushroom.

Lorcaserin supports weight-loss by suppressing the appetite. If approved, Lorcaserin is expected to be marketed under the commercial name Lorqess.

Article source: http://www.latimes.com/health/boostershots/la-heb--weight-loss-drug-lorcaserin-20120510,0,4759947.story

By Emily P. Walker, Washington Correspondent, MedPage Today

Published: May 09, 2012

Take Posttest

WASHINGTON — In the second go-round for FDA approval of the investigational obesity drug lorcaserin hydrochloride (Lorqess), federal reviewers seemed to be satisfied that the drug doesn’t cause tumors, but have raised familiar safety concerns about cardiovascular side effects.

In 2010, an FDA panel voted against recommending approval for lorcaserin, made by Arena Pharmaceuticals, citing a variety of concerns, including a less-than-impressive average weight loss and data from animal studies suggesting that lorcaserin increased the risk of tumors in rodents.

The FDA rejected Arena’s application shortly after.

But the company has since submitted new data to address the safety issues, and the same panel that voted against the drug two years ago is meeting Thursday to analyze the additional data and vote on whether the drug is ready for approval.

In briefing documents released ahead of the meeting of the FDA’s Endocrinologic and Metabolic Drugs Advisory Committee, an FDA reviewer signed off the drug’s efficacy. He wrote that lorcaserin caused a statistically significant greater number of patients to lose at least 5% of their total weight, compared to placebo, which is the FDA’s requirement for weight-loss drugs.

FDA reviewers examined new data on mammary adenocarcinoma in rats and determined lorcaserin may contribute to tumors in the rodents, but only when used at a dose 24 times what is recommended in humans, meaning there’s a “negligible risk in human subjects” of developing mammary tumors, another FDA reviewer wrote.

The FDA reviewers also examined new data on the drug’s cardiovascular effects. Cardiovascular risks have long plagued diet drug development. Fen-phen was yanked from the market in the 1990s after reports of heart value issues, and more recently, in 2010 the obesity drug Meridia was pulled from the market after being linked to cardiovascular complications.

An FDA advisory committee recommended in March 2012 that companies that make obesity drugs should rule out excessive cardiovascular risk prior to drug approval. Lorcaserin was developed prior to that meeting, so its clinical trials weren’t designed to capture cardiovascular risk.

An analysis of pooled studies suggested an increased risk of valvular heart disease with lorcaserin cannot be ruled out, an FDA reviewer wrote.

In a separate analysis of the cardiovascular events in Arena’s trials, the event rates related to ischemic heart disease, heart attack, stroke, and cardiovascular death leaned slightly toward lorcaserin but were largely similar between patients taking the weight-loss drug and placebo. Formal statistical analyses on the cardiovascular events was not conducted.

Lorcaserin is one of three weight-loss drugs vying to be the first new diet drug approved in a decade.

The FDA is expected to make a decision on Qnexa — a low-dose combination of phentermine and topiramate — in July. Like lorcaserin, Qnexa was at first rejected by the FDA, but Vivus Inc., the manufacturer of Qnexa, submitted new data on the drug’s psychiatric and cardiovascular side effects and an FDA advisory committee endorsed approval by a 20-2 vote in February.

The makers of the third weight-loss drug, a naltrexone/bupropion combination pill called Contrave, announced in 2011 that it won’t market Contrave in the U.S. because the FDA’s additional requests for data are too burdensome.

The FDA is being particularly vigilant before approving new anti-obesity drugs because if approved, they would likely be very widely used given the nation’s obesity epidemic.

The FDA’s Endocrinologic and Metabolic Drugs Advisory Committee will discuss whether Arena submitted enough new data to ease safety concerns, and will also vote on whether lorcaserin should be approved.

The FDA is not required to follow the advice of its advisory panels but it often does.

Add Your Knowledge ™

Related Article(s):

• FDA Panel Turns Thumbs Down on Weight-Loss Drug
• FDA Nixes New Diet Drug
• Abbott Pulls Meridia from Market
• FDA Delays Qnexa Decision
• Diet Drug Won’t Make It to Market in U.S., Company Says

Article source: http://www.medpagetoday.com/Endocrinology/Obesity/32583

Article source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2012/05/08/prweb9482618.DTL