Two New Diet Drugs Move Toward Possible Approval: lorcaserin and Contrave

Well tomorrow is an important day in diet pill land as the FDA advisory panel is looking over a drug from Vivus called Qnexa on Thursday. There are also a couple of other promising pills on the horizon as well.

Arena Pharmaceuticals' lorcaserin is one of three drugs that are boosting hope for a new generation of more effective weight-loss medicines. One gets a Food and Drug Administration review on Thursday and the others, later this year.

In the study, lorcaserin (lore-KASS-ah-rin) caused more people to lose at least 5 percent of their body weight over one year, more than twice the rate achieved by those on dummy pills.

There is also this drug in the works as well:

Contrave, made by Orexigen Therapeutics Inc., combines bupropion and naltrexone. The first is used to help people quit smoking and deal with depression. The second is used to decrease cravings for alcohol and illegal drugs.

As long as they don't blow out your heart like Fen-Phen did in the 90s. That second one sounds petty interesting because it is a smoking cessation drug mixed with a drug to decrease cravings. That should work well for those compulsive eaters out there.

In any case it is good to see some companies taking a chance on diet drugs. That Fen-Phen scare and the resulting lawsuits pretty much soured the whole deal for years. The idea that you just pop a pill and you lose weight sounds like it should have been invented decades ago.