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A little while ago we reported that there was encouraging research carried out to see whether medications containing GLP-1 would be useful in treating obesity. In light of this, we are not surprised to hear about the promising results of a large-scale study.

The phase III trial, which was completed in Denmark, included a total of 846 overweight or obese individuals. The participants were randomly split into three groups who were then treated with 3mg Liraglutide, 1.8 mg Liraglutide or a placebo. The participants were further observed for 12 weeks after the cessation of the programme. The key findings indicated that individuals who received the highest dosage of Liraglutide also had the highest weight-loss. Specifically, 50% of the individuals in the 3 mg group lost at least 5% of their body weight, and 22% lost 10% of their weight during the course of the treatment. Similarly, 35% of individuals in the group that received 1.8mg of Liraglutide lost 5% of their body weight and 13% of the participants in this group lost 10% of their weight. In contrast to this, only 13% of the individuals in the placebo group lost 5% of their weight and 4% lost 10% of their weight. However, across groups it was clear that participants were not able to maintain their complete weight loss once they had stopped their treatment. The combination of these findings led the researchers to suggest that there is potential for Liraglutide to be a useful treatment for weight loss.

The findings from this study are certainly encouraging especially as it was carried out for such a long period of time with low attrition rates of a rather large sample. Moreover, the fact that it was a double blind study and that so many of the results reached statistical significance reflected that there are good reasons to further research this area. However, it also raised important clinical questions that need to be addressed, with dosage and length of treatment appearing as the most obvious ones.

The Online Clinic can prescribe Victoza (Liraglutide) as a weight loss treatment if it is appropriate for you. Some patients have had extremely good results with this product.