Amarillo files patent to treat obesity with interferon

Texas, USA-based Amarillo Biosciences, a specialty firm focused on low-dose, orally-administered interferon as a treatment for a variety of conditions, says that a patent has been filed with the US Patent and Trademark Office on the oral use of interferon to treat obesity.

The company recently conducted a review of clinical data from four studies that it had conducted wherein 582 women were treated for autoimmune diseases or fibromyalgia syndrome over three to six months with one of five different low daily doses of oral interferon or placebo. This found that a significantly greater proportion of women given two specific doses of oral interferon experienced at least a 5% weight loss, compared to those receiving placebo. This surprising benefit occurred in the women given oral interferon without a significant increase in adverse events, the firm said.

The World Health Organization predicts that, by 2015, around 2.3 billion adults will be overweight and more than 700 million will be obese. In the USA and Canada, half of all adults are likely to be obese within eight years, with only one in five people of healthy weight. The market for weight-loss drugs in the USA, Europe and Japan totaled around $600.0 million in 2005, and is expected to rise globally to about $2.0 billion by 2010, Amarillo noted.