Adverse Events Associated with Five Anti-Obesity Medications

Five medications are approved for treating obese and overweight patients: orlistat (Xenical; Alli), lorcaserin (Belviq), naltrexone-bupropion (Contrave), phentermine-topiramate (Qsymia), and liraglutide (Saxenda). For this meta-analysis, researchers identified 28 randomized trials that involved 29,018 patients (median age, 46; median baseline body-mass index, 36.1 kg/m²); in all trials, one or more of the five approved medications were compared with placebo.

Across all studies, a median of 23% of placebo patients achieved at least 5% weight loss at 1 year, compared with 75% of phentermine-topiramate patients, 63% of liraglutide patients, 55% of naltrexone-bupropion patients, 49% of lorcaserin patients, and 44% of orlistat patients. Excess we…