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Xenical

Orlistat (marketed as Xenical by Roche) is a drug designed to treat obesity. It works by inhibiting pancreatic lipase, an enzyme that breaks down fat in the intestine. Without this enzyme, fat from the diet is excreted undigested, and not absorbed by the body. more...

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Orlistat is available on prescription, although, as with many prescription drugs, it is possible to obtain it from online pharmacies. In 2004, a lower-dose version of the drug (60 mg compared to 120 mg for the prescription dose) was released over the counter in Australia and New Zealand; the United States is expected to follow in the near future.

It has a number of side effects related to digestion. Because its main effect is to prevent dietary fat from being absorbed from the gut, the fat is excreted and so the stool becomes oily, runny, and gassy. Bowel movements may become frequent, urgent or uncontrollable. To minimize these effects, the fat content of the diet should be reduced to about 30%. Obviously many patients find these side effects uncomfortable, and this has resulted in serious compliance issues.

The drug should only be taken when there is fat in a meal (it will not work if there is no fat in the diet). Because some vitamins are fat soluble, the effect of Orlistat is to reduce their absorption. A multivitamin tablet containing these vitamins (D E K and beta-carotene) should be taken once a day, at least 2 hours before or after taking the drug.

The amount of weight loss achieved with Orlistat is quite modest. The weight loss in a 4-year double-blind trial averaged only 2.8 kilograms (about 6 pounds) more than placebo. Despite this cosmetically small effect, there was a 37% reduction in the incidence of diabetes, a medically very significant difference.

You must not take Xenical if you:

  • have problems absorbing food
  • have reduced gallbladder function
  • are pregnant, or are still breast-feeding (it is not known whether Xenical is expressed in breast milk)
  • have certain kidney problems (consult your doctor).

Read more at Wikipedia.org
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Roche commits $75M to Xenical DTC campaign
From Drug Store News, 11/29/99

Hoffman-La Roche has begun its $75 million direct-to-consumer campaign for Xenical (orlistat), one of the largest DTC spends in the industry. Of the total, $50 million will be devoted exclusively to television. The campaign, the first branded DTC effort for a Roche product, puts the drug in the same league as Claritin, which had close to $200 million in ad spending in 1998.

Roche has 1,800 sales people detailing doctors, and initially rolled out the campaign with newspaper ads in 12 major markets in September.

According to IMS, more than 900,000 U.S. prescriptions have been written for Xenical since it was approved in May.

The television campaign focuses on two areas: the misperceptions often associated with weight-loss products and America's love for food. The difficulty in any DTC advertising, and one that stalls many campaigns, is the disclosure of side effects without scaring consumers. In the initial ads, federal regulators were not convinced Roche had presented the side effects "with the same prominence, speed or audibility" as the drug's benefits and did not adequately convey to consumers the risks of those side effects. Roche subsequently pulled the 60-second spots and replaced them with a new ad.

COPYRIGHT 1999 Lebhar-Friedman, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group

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