Breakthrough weight-loss drug works without nausea or vomiting, scientists reveal

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A breakthrough has been made in weight-loss drugs after scientists discovered a new medication – known as TDP – that works without causing side effects of nausea or vomiting.

Millions of Americans are already using Ozempic and other GLP-1 class drugs to lose weight. While largely successful, the shots can cause uncomfortable gastrointestinal side effects.

Those symptoms and others have landed patients in emergency rooms in recent years, with 25,000 visits occurring from 2022 to 2023, according to scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Researchers say the new experimental rival largely forgoes those issues although how it works to curb appetite is still being researched.

“This paper shows for the first time that giving a smaller version of octadecaneuropeptide in the periphery is still effective to improve body weight and metabolic control without side effects,” Caroline Geisler, an assistant professor at the University of Kentucky’s College of Pharmacy, told Gizmodo this week.

Researchers say a new experimental drug could give patients the same effective weight loss as Ozempic and other popular drugs without some of the gastrointestinal side effects. Those include nausea and vomiting (Getty Images/iStock)

Octadecaneuropeptide, commonly referred to as ODN, is a protein produced by brain cells called glia that support the nervous system. The researchers used ODN to create the drug TDP.

“Now we know that [glia] play a large role in sensing and communicating the status of the body, and we hope that by targeting a glial signaling molecule, we can engage many energy-regulating pathways in the brain and avoid the side effects of nausea and vomiting,” Geisler said.

In studies, the researchers inserted ODN into the hindbrain of rats, which contains the brainstem and cerebellum. The cerebellum is a part of the brain that controls movements and other cognitive processes, such as language and attention span.

Once the rats were treated with ODN, they lost weight and improved their ability to control their blood sugar. Whereas when the researchers blocked ODN, the animals showed a weaker response to treatment with the popular GLP-1 drugs.

They also dosed mice, rats, and shrews with TDN. The drug also improved blood sugar control, causing weight loss without nausea or vomiting in the rats for over a week. The shrews did not vomit either, and the drug appeared not to have effects on the animals’ movement, body temperatures, and heart rate.

However, the results, published in the journal Science Translational Medicine, are only a proof of concept.

The study’s authors are hoping to test the drugs in people next.

“We have an optimistic timeline that we could be ready to start clinical trials within two years,” Geisler said.