United States – A test diet drug seems to enable individuals to lose fat rapidly, according to new research.
Persons taking the drug amycretin shed as much as 13 percent of their weight within three months, in the first clinical trials estimated in Madrid during the European Association for the Study of Diabetes annual meeting, as reported by HealthDay.
Amycretin is reported to directly mimic the effects of two distinct hormones associated with hunger, according to the Danish pharma company developing the drug, the Novo Nordisk.
Dual Hormone Mimicry
It imitates glucagon, the hormone that is also copied by the state-of-the-art GLP-1 diabetes and obesity medicines called Ozempic and Wegovy – administered by weekly shot.
Besides this, amycretin also has similar effects as amylin, a hormone related to hunger and insulin regulation.
“A single molecule that targets both amylin and GLP-1 biology in a tablet form could offer a more convenient approach to achieving better outcomes for individuals with overweight or obesity,” Novo Nordisk researchers wrote in a company news release.
In the study, scientists tried amycretin on non-diabetic overweight and obese individuals.
Consequently, they established that the amount of weight loss with amycretin was superior to placebo and that greater dosages of amycretin resulted in superior weight reduction.
Potential Side Effects
People who were using a 50-milligram dose of Amycretin daily reduced their body weight, with an average reduction of more than ten percent after 12 weeks of the experiment, according to the research done on the same.
Those taking the 50-mg pill twice a day again lost more, with its percentage showing that they decreased their body weight by 13%.
More amounts of amycretin were also seen to produce more side effects, such as nausea and vomiting, by researchers, as reported by HealthDay.
Need for Further Research
The results show that amycretin led to “remarkable reductions in body weight over only 12 weeks,” the research team led by Agnes Gasoirek, a senior clinical pharmacology specialist at Novo Nordisk, wrote in their abstract. “Furthermore, the lack of weight loss plateauing indicates the possibility of achieving further weight reductions with extended treatment.”
However, researchers said they need more extensive and complex clinical research to determine the drug’s safety and efficacy.