Rhythm’s drug shows 25% drop in BMI over one year for patients with rare form of obesity

Rhythm Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals’ obe­si­ty drug set­melan­otide showed off a 25.5% re­duc­tion in body mass in­dex af­ter 12 months in adult and pe­di­atric pa­tients with hy­po­thal­a­m­ic obe­si­ty, a rare con­di­tion that caus­es pa­tients to feel ex­treme hunger, ac­cord­ing to new, longer-term Phase II da­ta pre­sent­ed Tues­day at Obe­si­ty­Week.

Set­melan­otide al­so led to a 16% re­duc­tion in mean BMI at three years in adult pa­tients with Bardet-Biedl syn­drome, a rare ge­net­ic dis­or­der that can lead to obe­si­ty, and a 20.3% re­duc­tion in mean BMI at four years in adults with obe­si­ty due to POMC or LEPR de­fi­cien­cy, an­oth­er rare ge­net­ic dis­or­der that stems from gene mu­ta­tions that reg­u­late hunger.

Unlock this article instantly by becoming a free subscriber.

You’ll get access to free articles each month, plus you can customize what newsletters get delivered to your inbox each week, including breaking news.