A new dieting drug looks set to be released in the UK to help women drop up to two dress sizes in six months – a perfect solution for women looking to lose weight but who don’t fancy going under the knife to have liposuction, gastric bands, stomach stapling or other extreme weightloss solutions.

The drug is called liraglutide and it is already in use in the treatment of diabetes. Liraglutide helps to lower blood pressure, helps to raise ‘good’ cholesterol levels in the body, and can help prevent diabetes. However slimmers have also said that it also produces a ‘feel-good’ factor when taken regularly.

Danish firm Novo Nordisk are the manufacturers of liraglutide and they are currently in the middle of a large scale slimming trial following 5,000 obese men and women, the results of which should be available in 2013.

Liraglutide tends to be injected from a pen. It is based on a gut hormone that tells the brain it is time to stop eating. Usually, this hormone is quickly broken by the body however the injected drug stays in the body for hours.

Preliminary trials on 550 patients have shown that the drug is better at helping people lose weight than one of the other most popularly GP-prescribed weightloss drugs, orlistat. Of the 550 participants, some were given placebos, some were given orlistat and some were given liraglutide.

28 percent of those on the highest dosage of liraglutide lost at least 10 percent of their body weight – almost three times the number of those achieving the same with orlistat. Those who were given liraglutide were also shown to have lost an average of a stone and a half over six months, around double as those on orlistat. The average women on liraglutide lost three inches from their waistlines over the six month trial period.

Of those who took liraglutide for a further 18 months, their weight loss tended to stay off. However many of those who were taking orlistat found that some of the pounds crept back on.

(Photo Credit: Iwan Beijes)