Reducing the health risks of obesity without serious side effects
Tuesday, July 27, 2010 - 04:42
in Health & Medicine
The drug rimonabant was developed as a treatment for obesity and its myriad of serious health consequences (for example, type 2 diabetes). Despite having its desired effects on weight, which it decreased, and on levels of glucose and fats in the blood, rimonabant was never approved for use in the US because of serious neurological side effects including depression and anxiety. Now, a team of researchers, led by George Kunos, at the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, and Alexandros Makriyannis, at Northeastern University, Boston, have developed a drug that has the same positive effects in mice on levels of glucose and fats in the blood as rimonabant but none of the neurological side effects...