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06.02.2021

Bimagrumab | A muscle enhancer turns into a weight loss drug

Pharmaceutical company Novartis is conducting trials with the myostatin blocker bimagrumab, we wrote in 2017. Trials in which people with the rare muscle disease sporadic inclusion body myositis received bimagrumab have failed, [fiercebiotech.com Apr 21, 2016] but a recent trial sugests that the new drug may more more applications than to enhance anabolism. Bimagrumab reduces fat mass.

Study
The researchers divided a group of about 50 obese and downright obese type 2 diabetics into 2 groups. For 48 weeks, they gave subjects in one group bimagrumab with an IV every 4 weeks, at a dose of 10 milligrams per kilogram of body weight. The maximum dose the subjects received was 1200 milligrams per session.

Subjects in a control group received an infusion without an active substance.

Both groups were given information about healthy eating and exercise.

Results
At the end of the 48 weeks, the subjects in the experimental group had lost 7.5 pounds of body fat. That amounted to 21 percent of their fat mass. The subjects in the other group lost practically no body fat.

At the same time, the subjects who received bimagrumab gained almost four kilos of lean body mass [say: muscle mass], while the subjects in the other group lost almost half a kilo of lean body mass.

Side effects
The myostatin inhibitor was not without side effects. Of every 10 study participants who received bimagrumab, 4 experienced diarrhea. An equal number of study participants reported muscle spasms.

Conclusion
"48 weeks of exposure to bimagrumab, an antibody inhibitor of ActRII, was safe and effective for treating the excess adiposity and metabolic disturbances of adult patients with obesity and type 2 diabetes", write the researchers.

"While antibody blockade or knockout of ActRII in animal models is accompanied by marked increases in skeletal muscle mass, this study confirms that inhibition of this receptor in human participants leads to not only increases in lean mass but profound decreases in body fat, along with improvements in glycemic control."

"Inhibition of ActRII may provide a novel pathway for the pharmacologic management of excess adiposity and accompanying metabolic disturbances."

Source:
JAMA Network Open. 2021;4(1):e2033457.

More:
One dose of myostatin inhibitor bimagrumab results in permanent muscle mass increase 28.11.2017

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