Newly approved weight-loss treatment could be a game-changer

A new weight loss medication has been approved in the US, and if it makes it to our shores it could be a game changer for obesity.

The latest figures show that currently up to 28 percent of Australian adults are obese, and in the US the figure was as high as 39.8 percent in 2017 according to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.

Now a new device has been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration to combat the figures, in what is being hailed as a landmark ruling for future approaches to weight loss.

The product is called Plenity and is targeted for adults who fall in the highly overweight to obese category, and the way it works is seriously futuristic.

Recommended to be used alongside diet changes and exercise, Business Wire reports that the new device is made of a combination of cellulose and citric acid – two naturally-derived building blocks.

The product comes in a capsule that, once ingested, releases thousands of particles that absorb water in the stomach, and create small gel pieces in the stomach and small intestine.

The pieces imitate plant-based foods but without any calories, essentially contributing to the fullness of the stomach and small intestine.

In other words; you take the capsule, it makes you feel full, you eat less.

The product can fill almost one quarter on the stomach, and is digested like normal food.

A study found that patients taking Plenity were twice as likely to lose up to 10 percent of their body weight than patients on a placebo.

The study was sponsored by Gelsis, the company who makes the drug, so its effectiveness will be more accurately tracked once it is being used by the general population.

Australia currently has only four obesity drugs approved by our FDA equivalent, the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods.

The number recently bumped up from three to four with the addition of the drug Contrave earlier this year.

Speaking to SBS at the time Contrave was approved, researcher Michael Crowley of Monash University said the more obesity treatments that are made available, the closer we will come to breaking down stigma around the disease.

“There is a sector of the medical community and a sector of the Australian political community who regard obesity as a moral failing,” he said.

He argues that more medical treatments being made available for weight loss could break that stigma down, and force us to accept obesity as a disease not a lack of control.

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