Researchers from New Zealand have released a report claiming that Reductil, the recently-banned slimming pill, has a better safety profile that it has been credited with by European regulators.
While the drug is no longer available in the European Union, it is still approved in New Zealand.
The new study followed nearly 15,000 obese or overweight patients who has been prescribed the drug. In their summary, the authors pointed to crucial differences and different results to those obtained from the American Scout study, which lead to the drug’s loss of license.
The lead author of the NZ report, Dr. Harrison-Woolrych, said that the SCOUT study showed that the overall risk of death associated with Reductil was 10 times higher than that which they demonstrated in their study.
There was also a far lower rate of death than that of the American study. Dr. Harrison-Woolrych suggested that the death rate might have been lower as the average age of the participants in the study was lower than those who took part in SCOUT.
The SCOUT study has been criticised as it involved patients with a high risk of heart problems already, though patients with a risk of cardiovascular disease are excluded from being prescribed Reductil.
The study, which has been published in the journal Drug Safety, had been greeted with cautious interest by New Zealand’s own regulators, Medscape. They are currently reviewing Reductil in light of the European ban.
The group manager for the regulators, Dr. Stuart Jessamine, said that the study showed that the drug was safer than indicated by previous studies but said that his organisation would be assessing the totality of the evidence, rather than one study in isolation.