Obesity due to a matter of Taste

Published: Oct 30, 2014

By Kristina Fiore, Staff Writer, MedPage Today

It's not the gut, but the tongue that will be the focus of some of the top research at this year's Obesity Week conference.

A hot area of obesity research is in the connection between taste and obesity, according to Alison Field, ScD, of Boston Children's Hospital and a spokesperson for The Obesity Society. The meeting is presented jointly with the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery.

Researchers will share data on how to help patients deal with food cravings -- a step toward a more personalized way of managing obesity, Field said.

"We're looking at food cues and how we can help people overcome them," she said. "It's about small behavioral changes people can make, that will make things like walking by a bakery less of a problem."

One group will present results on an intervention involving self-induced "distractions," and how these can affect food cravings, Field said.

Ninh Nguyen, MD, president of ASMBS and chief of gastrointestinal surgery at the University of California Irvine, highlighted a study that shows how patients who reported diminished taste intensity after bariatric surgery lost more weight than those whose sense of taste remained intense.

"It may be one mechanism by which people lose weight," Nguyen told MedPage Today.

The Skinny on Obesity Drugs

Now that three new obesity drugs -- Belviq (lorcaserin HCl), Qsymia (phentermine-topiramate), and Contrave (naltrexone-bupropion) -- are all on the market, participants will have a number of sessions to discuss how to best use these medications.

In addition to abstracts at poster sessions, there will be several symposia on the new pharmacologic landscape in obesity medicine.

One of those abstracts includes results of combining Belviq with phentermine, which was released by drugmaker Eisai ahead of the meeting.

In a 12-week study, 238 overweight and obese patients were randomized to either Belviq alone or to taking it in combination with phentermine either once or twice daily.

Researchers found no difference between groups in terms of the primary endpoint of having at least one of nine adverse events: headache, dizziness, nausea, fatigue, dry mouth, diarrhea, vomiting, insomnia, or anxiety.

New Obesity Devices

Nguyen noted that results from the pivotal REDUCE trial of a dual-balloon implant from ReShape will be reported at the meeting.

The randomized trial tested the safety and efficacy of an implant that uses two balloons instead of one, with the idea that if one balloon deflates, the other will prevent the device from becoming lodged in the gastrointestinal tract.

An earlier, single-balloon device ran into such complications, but the new device appears to be an improvement, Nguyen said, helping patients lose more weight than diet and exercise alone.

Nguyen added that new data on complication rates with bariatric surgery will be reported at the meeting.

"We know mortality rates [associated with bariatric surgery] are relatively low, and they have come down over the past decade," he told MedPage Today. "Complication rates follow a similar trend, as a decade ago they were much higher, but now they are becoming equivalent to other common procedures including gall bladder surgery and hysterectomy."

Keynote Speakers

C. Ronald Kahn, MD, of Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston, will present Tuesday's keynote address, focusing on the genetic aspects of diabetes. The talk will be titled "Developmental Genes and miRNAs in Control of Body Fat."

This year's annual Mason lecture, Nguyen said, will be given by its namesake, Edward Mason, MD, considered the "father of bariatric surgery."

Mason, a professor emeritus at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, will discuss his work with the loop gastric bypass -- a procedure to treat ulcer which he modified for use in obesity after realizing that ulcer patients appeared to lose weight after receiving the treatment.