Obesity is a disease and a growing health threat both in the USA and all over the world. The drug bupropion can help overweight and obese women lose
Obesity is a disease and a growing health threat both in the USA and all over the world. The drug bupropion can help overweight and obese women lose weight in the long-term. It raises the risk of high blood pressure, diabetes, cancer and heart disease. Weight loss diets don't always work in the long term, and there has seen to be a need, now, to develop drugs which can handle obesity.
Researchers at Harvard University in the USA have discovered that the drug bupropion, which is used for depression and smoking cessation, is helpful in helping women sustain weight loss. They gave 50 non-depressed overweight and obese women bupropion or placebo for eight weeks and put them on a 1,500 calorie per day diet. Two thirds of those on bupropion lost more than five per cent of their body weight, while only 15 per cent in the placebo group lost weight. They continued for another 16 weeks, after which time those on bupropion lost nearly 10 per cent of their body weight, on average, of which 70 per cent was fat. The benefits were maintained during two years of follow-up. It is not known how bupropion works in weight loss, although it's known to alter brain chemistry and may affect the appetite centres or circuits involved in getting pleasurable feelings from eating.
