22-year old patient loses life in drug trials for weight loss

A 22-year old patient died recently during late stage trials for an obesity drug. Zafgen Inc. says that the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has put a partial hold on the development of their treatment, beloranib.

It’s nice to see the FDA doing something right.

The company largely focuses on drugs for the treatment of metabolic disorders, and is now branching out to the treatment of obesity. It’s pretty sad that Americans must combat their addiction to food with prescription drugs because they can’t get off the sofa. Zafgen promises to screen future test subjects for pre-existing thrombotic disease, due to reports of increased blood clots in on-going and completed trials. I’m sure that will be of much comfort to the 22-year old child’s parents. Zafgen says the patient died during later stages of the trial, while they were testing the drug to treat Prader-Willi syndrome – a genetic disorder that leads to obesity.

The partial hold by the FDA seems to be nothing more than a hurdle to Zafgen, who will no doubt be wanting to use the drug not only to treat Prader-Willi syndrome, but every-day overeaters as well. There’s not much of a profit in rare, genetic disorders, after all.

Source:

newsmax.com