Effectiveness of serotonergic agonists in the treatment of obese patients

OBJECTIVE: To compare the effectiveness of two interventions in the treatment of obese patients: hypocaloric diet and hypocaloric diet plus serotoninergic medication. DESIGN: Randomised clinical trial. SETTING: Primary Care. Out-patient Endocrinology clinic. PATIENTS: The trial included 60 obese adults, assigned at random to two groups of 30 each. Both groups were comparable for sex, age, weight and Body Mass Index. Weight controls were performed at 2, 4 and 6 months. RESULTS: There were no significant differences in weight losses at the times studied (2, 4 and 6 months) between the Control (Hypocaloric diet) and Study (Hypocaloric diet plus medication) groups. There were significant weight losses in both groups analysed between 2 and 4 months, with a Body Mass Index which went down from 36.2 to 34.12 and from 35.52 to 33.57 (p < 0.001) in the Control and Study groups, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: No significant differences were observed in the results obtained for obese patients between a hypocaloric diet supplemented by serotoninergic medication and a hypocaloric diet.