The Daily Telegraph - 07.08.2019

The Daily Telegraph Wednesday 7 August 2019 *** 3

News

Scientists unveil jab to combat obesity without surgery

By Sarah Knapton SCIENCE EDITOR

AN ANTI-OBESITY injection, which
mimics the effect of a gastric bypass
operation without the need for sur-
gery, has been developed by British
scientists.
The NHS performs around 6,
gastric bands and bypasses each year,
which can dramatically help obese
people to lose weight and improve
blood sugar levels in diabetics. But the
procedures are expensive and can
cause complications such as abdominal
pain, nausea and vomiting.

Now scientists at Imperial College

London have developed a hormonal

cocktail, which, when injected, recre-

ates chemical changes in the body that

accompany stomach surgery.

As the stomach becomes smaller af-

ter an operation, the body starts pro-

ducing glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1),

oxyntomodulin and peptide, which

suppress appetite, trigger weight loss

and help sugar absorption from food.

When 15 obese people were given

continual injections of the treatment

under the skin for 12 hours a day, they

lost an average of 4.4kg over four

weeks, and blood sugar levels returned

to near normal levels for some patients.

Prof Tricia Tan, from Imperial Col-

lege London and lead author of the

study, said: “There is a real need to find

new medicines so we can improve and

save lives. Our new combination hor-

mone treatment is promising and has

shown significant improvements in pa-

tients’ health in only four weeks.”

It is estimated that one in four adults

is now obese and the problem is fore-

cast to get worse in coming decades.

For the study, 26 obese patients with

prediabetes and those with diabetes

were recruited from July 2016 to Octo-

ber 2018.

Fifteen patients were randomly se-

lected to receive the hormone treat-

ment and 11 were given a saline infusion

as a placebo over a four-week period.

The team also recruited 21 patients

who had undergone bariatric surgery

and 22 patients who followed a very

low-calorie diet to compare the results.

Patients on the hormonal treatment

lost an average of nearly 10lbs (4.4kg),

compared with 5.5lbs (2.5kg) for par-

ticipants receiving a placebo. The treat-

ment had no side effects.

The research was published in the

journal Diabetes Care and presented at

the American Diabetes Association an-

nual meeting in San Francisco.

u Campaigners are urging the Govern-

ment to bring in a calorie levy follow-

ing the roll-out of the “sugar tax”.

Companies producing high-calorie

processed food should be taxed to en-

courage healthier versions, said Action

on Sugar and Action on Salt. This

would hold manufacturers to account

and lead to products with “excessive”

calories being reformulated with less

fat as well as sugar, the groups said.

Camra calls

time on sexist

beer labels

By Lydia Bunt

REAL ALE enthusiasts have been
banned from giving beers sexist names
at this year’s Great British Beer Festi-
val.
Drinks with names such as Dizzy
Blonde, Slack Alice, Top Totty and The
Village Bike will be barred at the Cam-
paign for Real Ale’s (Camra) flagship
event, running at Olympia London un-
til Saturday. Organisers have also
called time on beer-pump clips
and bottle labels featuring
provocative images of fe-
males.
Camra said it had de-
cided to act after a sur-
vey revealed more than
two thirds of women
would be unlikely to
buy a beer if they saw it
advertised in a sexist
way.
The group admitted it
needed to do more to “over-
come outdated stereotypes”
and encourage female beer-drink-
ers.
Abigail Newton, Camra vice-chair-
man, said 1,000 beers, ciders and per-
ries had been checked to ensure they
adhered to Camra’s code of conduct.
She said: “It’s hard to understand why
some brewers would actively choose to
alienate customers with material likely
only to appeal to a tiny percentage. We
need to do more to encourage female
beer-drinkers. Beer is not a man’s
drink or a woman’s drink, it is a drink
for everyone.”
First held at Olympia in 1992, the fes-
tival markets itself as the world’s big-
gest real-ale event.

t

een

mes

sti-

zzy

The

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Emma Hepburn, Rebecca McLachlan,

Hope Hudson, Phoebe Woods and

Tringa Dalladaku enjoy some

inoffensive real ales at the beer

festival in London. Top Totty, left,

was last year rebranded as ‘1 Hop’

Switching from

red meat to

chicken lowers

the risk of

developing

breast cancer, a

study published

in the British

Medical Journal

found. Analysis

of more than

42,000 women

by researchers

at Columbia

University, New

York, found that

eating poultry

in favour of red

meats was

linked with a

28 per cent

decreased

likelihood of the

disease.

Red alert Breast cancer find

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