Word: redux
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...some respects Redux has been a victim of its own early success. The first new antiobesity medication in more than 20 years, the drug enjoyed one of the fastest launches in pharmaceutical history. Both the FDA and Wyeth-Ayerst Laboratories, which markets Redux, knew about the possibility of brain damage at high doses. But they also knew people who are morbidly obese--individuals who weigh 30% more than average--face even greater risks that they will die young from heart disease, diabetes or stroke. "We made the decision that the benefits outweigh the risks, at least for the population...
Still, the FDA was not entirely satisfied, and as a condition of approval it required that Wyeth-Ayerst conduct a follow-up study to determine whether Redux users were suffering any ill effects from the drug. Wyeth-Ayerst's critics say the company has been dragging its feet. Wyeth-Ayerst, for its part, says it is pleased with Redux's sales and is ready to start the tests, but that the FDA still has not decided how the study should be designed...
...Wyeth-Ayerst to iron out details of the follow-up study, critics cried "cover-up"--as if the FDA never granted drug companies private meetings in order to protect trade secrets. In April the Associated Press reported that a 38-year-old, 120-lb. woman had died after taking Redux for just a few days. It turned out that she weighed 220 lbs. and was in fact murdered--a turn of events that can hardly be blamed on the diet pill. The AP issued a correction, but the damage to the drug's image had been done...
...press can, with time and a big enough marketing budget, be surmounted. Failing to deliver is another matter. "It just doesn't seem to work that well," says Dr. Richard Joseph, an obesity expert in Naperville, Ill. "I consider only a few of my patients Redux success stories...
Joseph is not sure why Redux has not panned out for more of his patients. It may be that they put too much faith in the pill to make them thin without their having to eat less or exercise more. But Joseph also suspects a biochemical explanation. Redux, like "fen/phen" before it, boosts the levels of serotonin, a neurochemical that, among other things, signals the brain that the body has had enough food. "If a lack of serotonin is the reason patients are overeating, then Redux should work beautifully," Joseph says. "But if they are overeating for some other reason...