Did a diabetes medicine help obese women lose weight?
Short-Term Exenatide Treatment Leads to Significant Weight Loss in a Subset of Obese Women Without Diabetes
Not medical advice. For informational purposes only. Always consult a healthcare professional. Terms
Surprising Findings
Nausea did not correlate with weight loss.
Many assume that gastrointestinal side effects like nausea mean the drug is suppressing appetite and working — but here, feeling sick had no link to actual weight loss.
Practical Takeaways
If prescribed exenatide for weight loss, don’t expect nausea to predict success — stick with it even if you don’t feel sick.
Not medical advice. For informational purposes only. Always consult a healthcare professional. Terms
Surprising Findings
Nausea did not correlate with weight loss.
Many assume that gastrointestinal side effects like nausea mean the drug is suppressing appetite and working — but here, feeling sick had no link to actual weight loss.
Practical Takeaways
If prescribed exenatide for weight loss, don’t expect nausea to predict success — stick with it even if you don’t feel sick.
Publication
Journal
Diabetes Care
Year
2011
Authors
J. Dushay, Chuanyu Gao, G. Gopalakrishnan, M. Crawley, Emilie K. Mitten, E. Wilker, J. Mullington, E. Maratos-Flier
Related Content
Claims (5)
Some women who are obese but don’t have diabetes lose a good amount of weight on a drug called exenatide for 16 weeks, but almost as many actually gain weight — showing it works very differently from person to person.
Lots of obese women who aren't diabetic feel nauseous when they start taking a drug called exenatide for weight loss — about 56 out of every 100. But the queasiness usually gets better over time, and how much weight they lose doesn’t seem to depend on how bad the nausea is.
Taking a drug called exenatide twice a day for about four months helps obese women who don’t have diabetes lose around 2.5 kilograms on average, and they start seeing results in just two weeks.
Taking a drug called exenatide for 16 weeks helps obese women who don’t have diabetes lose about 1.7 cm from their waist, even if they don’t change their diet or exercise.
Even if obese women lose weight on a drug called exenatide, their metabolism doesn’t slow down like it usually does when people lose weight from dieting — so this drug might skip the usual 'metabolic slowdown' people hit.