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Qnexa: Qnexa Weight-loss Drug

February 24, 2012 by · Comments Off on Qnexa: Qnexa Weight-loss Drug 

Qnexa: Qnexa Weight-loss Drug, Drugmakers have been trying to battle obesity for as long as Americans have been packing on the pounds. But they’ve lost as many battles as those trying to lose weight.

For nearly a century, scientists have struggled to make a diet pill that helps people lose weight without side effects that range from embarrassing digestive issues to dangerous heart problems.

This week, federal health advisers endorsed the weight loss pill Qnexa, even though the FDA previously rejected it over concerns that it can cause heart palpitations and birth defects if taken by pregnant women.

The vote raises hopes that the U.S. could approve its first anti-obesity drug in more than a decade. It also highlights how challenging it is to create a pill that fights fat in a variety of people without negative side effects.

“Having a drug for obesity would be like telling me you had a drug for the fever,” Dr. Mitchell Roslin, chief of bariatric surgery at Northern Westchester Hospital in New York, said. “There can be millions of different reasons why someone is obese; it’s really a symptom of various underlying mechanisms.”

An effective and safe diet pill would be an easy sale in the U.S. The country has over 75 million obese adults – nearly 35 percent of the population. But the biggest problem in creating a weight-loss drug is that there’s no safe way to turn off one of the human body’s most fundamental orders.

For millions of years, humans have been programmed to consume calories and store them as energy – that is, fat. It’s this biological mechanism that makes it almost impossible to quickly lose weight by not eating. Cutting down on food instead sends stronger signals to the body to store more calories.

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