FROM:
There’s a feeding frenzy under way for the weight-loss aid called alli.
At a Walgreens in Santa Monica, Calif., the nonprescription fat-blocker from GlaxoSmithKline was almost sold out in the first four hours it was on the shelf, the Los Angeles Times reports. “I have never in my life experienced anything like this,” the store’s pharmacist said. The only run that came close was the frenzy for antibiotic Cipro during the anthrax scare after 9/11, she said.
This week GlaxoSmithKline is rolling out alli, an over-the-counter version of Roche’s Xenical, that curbs the absorption of calorie-rich fat in the intestine. Consumers, hungry for help in losing weight, are snapping up the medicine. A 90-pill starter kit costs $62.99 at drugstore.com, and Glaxo says the medicine will be available in major drug, grocery, and discount stores across the country today.
But diet pills have a checkered past, with side effects often overtaking early enthusiasm for the medicines. Amphetamines’ ability to suppress appetite made them the diet pills of choice in the ’60s, but they were widely abused. Regulators and doctors clamped down on the drugs in the ’70s. Diet-drug cocktail fen-phen, the fad of the ’90s, was linked to heart-valve damage that has cost Wyeth more than $21 billion in settlements and legal costs since its drugs Pondimin and Redux were withdrawn from the market in 1997.
Alli’s biggest drawback isn’t life-threatening but it could hurt your social life. As the FDA cautioned euphemistically after its approval of the medicine earlier this year: “The most common side effect of the product is a change in bowel habits, which may include loose stools.”
Glaxo refers to the problems as “treatment effects” but is otherwise blunter in warning patients: “You may feel an urgent need to go to the bathroom. Until you have a sense of any treatment effects, it’s probably a smart idea to wear dark pants, and bring a change of clothes with you to work.”
A pharmacy manager told the LAT that side effects haven’t been part of the discussion with consumers. ” ‘Will it work?’ That’s the only question they’re asking.”
FROM:
There’s a feeding frenzy under way for the weight-loss aid called alli.
At a Walgreens in Santa Monica, Calif., the nonprescription fat-blocker from GlaxoSmithKline was almost sold out in the first four hours it was on the shelf, the Los Angeles Times reports. “I have never in my life experienced anything like this,” the store’s pharmacist said. The only run that came close was the frenzy for antibiotic Cipro during the anthrax scare after 9/11, she said.
This week GlaxoSmithKline is rolling out alli, an over-the-counter version of Roche’s Xenical, that curbs the absorption of calorie-rich fat in the intestine. Consumers, hungry for help in losing weight, are snapping up the medicine. A 90-pill starter kit costs $62.99 at drugstore.com, and Glaxo says the medicine will be available in major drug, grocery, and discount stores across the country today.
But diet pills have a checkered past, with side effects often overtaking early enthusiasm for the medicines. Amphetamines’ ability to suppress appetite made them the diet pills of choice in the ’60s, but they were widely abused. Regulators and doctors clamped down on the drugs in the ’70s. Diet-drug cocktail fen-phen, the fad of the ’90s, was linked to heart-valve damage that has cost Wyeth more than $21 billion in settlements and legal costs since its drugs Pondimin and Redux were withdrawn from the market in 1997.
Alli’s biggest drawback isn’t life-threatening but it could hurt your social life. As the FDA cautioned euphemistically after its approval of the medicine earlier this year: “The most common side effect of the product is a change in bowel habits, which may include loose stools.”
Glaxo refers to the problems as “treatment effects” but is otherwise blunter in warning patients: “You may feel an urgent need to go to the bathroom. Until you have a sense of any treatment effects, it’s probably a smart idea to wear dark pants, and bring a change of clothes with you to work.”
A pharmacy manager told the LAT that side effects haven’t been part of the discussion with consumers. ” ‘Will it work?’ That’s the only question they’re asking.”
FROM: