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Welcome to ai forum rx where we explore the evidence that informs ambulatory care pharmacy practice today’s presentation is regarding the article effects of low dose controlled release from tear main plus topiramate combination on weight and associated comorbidities in overweight and obese adults published in the lancet april of 2011 a presenter is diane hadley
A pgy – ambulatory care pharmacy practice resident at the university of maryland school of pharmacy over the last 20 years there has been a dramatic increase in the prevalence of obesity in the united states according to the cdc every state in the us had a 20% or higher prevalence of obesity in 2010 and a dozen states had a 30% or higher prevalence rate why is
This important well obesity can result in a number of health-related complications especially related to cardiovascular health it has an established link to diabetes hypertension and dyslipidemia which collectively increased the risk of mi and cva what can be done to decrease these risks and treat obesity diet and exercise are the mainstays of treatment but what
Pharmacologic agents are available for the management of obesity this timeline of obesity pharmacotherapy was adapted from the journal of obesity medications for weight loss date back to the 1930s but many therapies have been restricted or withdrawn from the market due to the potential for serious adverse effects in october 2010 just three months after this chart
Was published serb you demean or meridia was also withdrawn following the publication of the scout trial this rtc showed a 1.4 percent absolute risk increase in cardiovascular events was serb you to mean compared to placebo as clinicians we are left wondering if and when it is safe to recommend pharmacotherapy for weight loss one of the newest agents to receive fda
Approval for weight loss is the combination of phentermine and topiramate the medication branded under the name ku samia is marketed by vives in july 2012 the fda approved ksenia for short term weight loss in patients with a bmi of 30 or greater it is also indicated in patients with a bmi of 27 or greater plus one weight related comorbidity including hypertension type
2 diabetes or disobeyed amia ksenia was approved with a risk evaluation and mitigation strategy or rems which consists of a medication guide advising patients about important safety information and elements to assure safe use such as including prescriber training and pharmacy certification vives was also required to conduct a long-term cardiovascular outcomes trial
To assess the risk of cardiovascular outcomes like mi and cva two major clinical practice guidelines addressed the management of obesity the nhlbi obesity education initiative guidelines and the 2005 american college of physicians guidelines for obesity management both america men lifestyle modifications including diet exercise and behavioral therapy as first-line
Treatment there are a few differences as well for example the nhlbi guidelines consider the use of pharmacologic therapy for weight loss in patients with an earlier stage of obesity compared with the acp guidelines also nhlbi guidelines do not mention the use of antidepressant medications for the treatment of obesity while the acp guidelines include antidepressant
Agents as a therapeutic option for weight loss before we proceed further in the presentation we’re going to stop for a clinical checkpoint according to the nhlbi obesity education initiative guidelines what does it cutoff for the definition of a class 1 obesity is it a twenty five to twenty nine point nine kilograms per meter squared is a b thirty to thirty four
Point nine kilograms per meter squared is it c 35 to thirty nine point nine kilograms per meter squared or d greater than 40 kilograms per meter squared and the answer is b 32 34.9 kilograms per meter squared the conquer trial was a double-blind placebo-controlled phase three trial which was conducted in a multicenter fashion within the us this study randomized
Patients in a two to one to two fashion favoring the placebo and the higher dose of phentermine to appear mate the authors noted this randomization purposely to highlight the benefits risk ratio between the placebo and the higher joseph enter mean to appear mate in addition of pharmacotherapy patients were given the learn manual a weight loss guide centered on the
Five aspects of behavioural modification lifestyles exercise attitudes relationships and nutrition follow-up occurred at baseline two weeks and four weeks during drug titration and then monthly thereafter the primary outcomes included mean percentage change in body weight and proportion of patients with a 5% or greater percentage of weight loss secondary outcomes
Included weight loss proportion of patients with a 10% or greater weight loss changes in waist measurement and other efficacy variables including bmi blood pressure lipids glycemic parameters and other surrogate markers the inclusion criteria for the trial appropriately included all patients with bmis that were classified from overweight to morbidly obese they also
Included all patients that are at high risk for metabolic syndrome they appropriately excluded patients that are on diabetic therapies that could affect weight such as the self on areas that could cause weight gain insulin which can also cause weight gain and tz ds which could cause fluid retention baseline characteristics were similar among groups with an average
Age of 51 years old and an average bmi in the class to obesity range of note the majority of patients for caucasian women with abdominal obesity amin hemoglobin a1c of 5.9% and a mean ldl cholesterol of 120 milligrams per deciliter more than half of the study population had three or more obesity related comorbidities including hypertension pre-diabetes diabetes
Or dyslipidemia in the intention-to-treat arm of the trial both of the doses of phentermine topiramate had impressive reduction in weight loss of about 18 pounds for the low dose group and 22 pounds for the high dose group compared to only 3 pounds for the placebo group in addition the intention-to-treat arm showed that a large majority of patients reached a 5
Percent weight loss in the per protocol portion of the trial impressive weight loss was achieved despite the relatively high dropout rate of about 38% the highest percentage of dropouts was seen in the placebo group however both of the phentermine and topiramate groups also noted significant dropout rates the low dose group lost about 22 pounds and the high dose
Group lost about 28 pounds statistically significant differences were noted in several of the secondary outcomes but clinically meaningful differences were only noted for waist circumference and systolic blood pressure the decrease in waist circumference was approximately 2 inches greater for the low dose a phentermine topiramate group and 2.7 inches greater in
The high dose group compared to placebo in addition the systolic blood pressure decreased by 2.3 millimeters of mercury in the low dose group and three point two millimeters of mercury in the high dose group compared to placebo there were a number of statistically significant differences in the incidence of adverse effects between the placebo and phentermine
Topiramate treated patients the most common side effects associated with phentermine topiramate included dry mouth paresthesias and constipation a slight increase in heart rate was also noted in the high dose phentermine topiramate group limitations of the conquer trial included poor representation of male subjects and high-risk minority groups a significant
Number of study subjects were also lost to follow-up however the trial did show that treatment with phentermine topiramate resulted in clinically meaningful weight loss in a high-risk population i would like to walk our panelist dr. sina haynes who is coming to us from palm beach atlantic university gregory school of pharmacy she is a professor and a associate
Dean and also dr. philip rogers who’s the professor at the university of north carolina chapel hill assistant dean of pharmacy practice partnerships so thank you both for taking the time out of your busy schedules to talk about what can we give patients for pharmacotherapy for weight loss so my first question that i’m gonna pose to both of you is i think we can
All agree that on lifestyle modification it’s really the best approach to weight loss but under what circumstance would each of you recommend pharmacotherapy for weight loss you know obviously yes we do consider lifestyle modification and to be paramount in really any weather you’re gonna use pharmacotherapy or not patients can’t lose sight of the fact that they
Still do need to focus on lifestyle modification and i think in clinical practice we’ve often seen the patient given a trial of it i would say that three months should be a reasonable amount of time to at least see some weight loss some might argue for shorter or longer periods of time but i think at that point is where most clinicians making a decision to where
The patient needs extra help and to me those patients that might be on other drugs that might be causing weight gain you know despite their best efforts and intentions to lose weight if they’re on medicines that are causing them to gain weight such as insulin and so forth they may be someone i’d have a lower threshold for helping with some pharmacotherapy because
I know it’s very difficult for them to lose weight i would recommend pharmacotherapy in patients who have a significant amount of weight to lose that have tried the three to six months of lifestyle modification and i certainly feel pharmacotherapy is warranted in patients who i believe are candidates for bariatric surgery i think bariatric surgery is certainly
Becoming more of a popular option for a wider array of patients and it has really great outcomes but some people are not candidates for either financially or clinically and these drugs can be helpful to those patients although maybe not certainly not as as effective i think that you both brought up some really good points about when we can consider patients for
Weight loss pharmacotherapy based on the results of the cocker trial do you think the combination of phentermine into a pyramid should be considered as the drug of choice for weight loss and what are some strengths and weaknesses that you see in a study i would consider this a drug of choice unless it’s contraindicated this was an agent that has been evaluated
For two years which is longer than other agents i do feel we need to realize the degree of weight loss that we have overall with pharmacotherapy is modest at best and in terms of some of the weaknesses of this study subjects were primarily middle-aged white women and few elderly patients which while these patients have cardio metabolic risk factors the subjects
Enrolled did not really represent what i feel is the complexity and severity of concurrent disease states that i see in practice and then in terms of some of the strengths you know definitely this combination helped patients lose 10% of their body weight or what was in average i think of 24 pounds in a year and the fda right now looks at a 5 percent weight loss
Benchmark when they’re looking to approve agents for obesity management and this study did see that cardio metabolic risk factors improved they talked about the reductions in of course systolic blood pressure diastolic blood pressure triglycerides reactive protein patients fasting glucose and total cholesterol with an improvement in hdl so i think that was the
Strength of this study i’ll comment my thoughts on drug of choice i guess my inclination would be to to utilize a single drug therapy at first the evidence for this combination is is is getting very compelling given the conquer study but i think that given the side effects that have been of some concern i think due to the just a longer clinical experience that
We’ve got with drugs like phentermine alone as well as orlistat i might be more tempted to offer a patient that initially and if there’s good effect seen with that or we need enhanced effects then moving on to this asian although i think for patients who are morbidly obese or have had problems with losing weight with other agents in the past and going directly to
This agent certainly could be an option the strengths that i liked in the conquer trial was its duration i was really pleased to see them in at least a more expansive inclusion of patients certainly less restrictive exclusion criteria than we see in most previous obesity studies many obesity studies in the past have been criticized for studying the what we might
Call the healthy obese population the ones that have very few complications of their of their disease for weaknesses obviously the trial suffered from not having an active comparator we simply had lifestyle modification and placebo that was unfortunately not really well described in the paper i do agree the elderly were poorly represented here which is going to be
A greater problem as the population ages and then also this trial was limited in its assessment of cognitive dysfunction that it really only looked at what was referred to as disturbance of attention i actually agree with phil on his last comment related to psychiatric disturbances in terms of a weakness of this study people with clinically significant depression
Were actually removed from the study you know we need more information in order to determine if this agent could be used in patients who have mood disorders or suffer from depression which we often do see in patients who are obese now what about other agents like liraglutide are exempt id that we know can have a side effect of weight loss would you ever consider
These agents for weight loss in patients who don’t have diabetes i would consider that a possible solution for some of these individuals i would probably limit their use to only those patients who have known pre-diabetes as we might call it or multiple risk factors for developing diabetes i do agree with phil there are trials underway to investigate the effects
Of zenit i’d and lorig low tide in non diabetes patients with obesity and actually pcos and we have such few agents to use long term i think this class certainly has a promising utility as monotherapy or as part of a multifactorial approach in treating our patients with diabetes and obesity and i would consider using eggs an atty irregular type in a patient with
Pre-diabetes or impaired glucose tolerance over this agent we’ve been discussing however unfortunately some of the same issues that limit the use of currently approved weight-loss therapy like side-effects contraindication and even third-party coverage and cost will probably affect the glp-1 agents use as well i think it’s gonna be a very kind of interesting next
Couple of years in terms of the field of obesity pharmacotherapy thank you both very much for your time i really appreciate it and your insight and clinical perspective the combination of phentermine topiramate or coo samia is an important addition to the pharmacologic treatments for obesity treatment can result in significant weight loss among patients who
Are overweight or obese of note phentermine topiramate therapy may increase heart rate and the risk of heart attacks or strokes is yet to be determined therefore ku samia is not recommended in patients with recent or unstable cardiovascular disease or stroke the medication should be also avoided in pregnancy due to the risk of birth defects the fda recommends
That women of childbearing age receive contraception and monthly pregnancy tests while taking the medication the drug should also be avoided in patients with comorbid glaucoma or hypothyroidism in order to ensure safe use ksenia and compliance with the rem strategy the medication can only be prescribed by certified providers who have completed an online training
Program and can only be dispensed by certified pharmacies additional information about provider certification program and certified pharmacies can be found on the q semia website thank you for taking the time to listen to my presentation of the conquer trial and have a great day thank you for viewing this capta cast and for your comments this broadcast was brought
To you by eye forum rx examining the evidence that informs ambulatory care practice
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The CONQUER Study Phentermine plus Topiramate for Weight Loss By The best price hotel for you!
