The only serious contender for a weight-loss drug is Qnexa, which
showed an eye-popping 7% spread over the control group in it's most
recent data set. But it also showed side effects that are likely to
induce patients to discontinue use and to cause some concern among
physicians in prescribing it. Parathesia (which is your skin going
numb and prickly for an extended period of time), dry mouth and
altered taste were reported at 20%, 18% and 15%, repectively (placebo
3%, 0%, 0%). So there are obvious, dramatic, uncomfortable side
effects. What is bizarre to me about the recent market movement is
that this drug, which is not a new drug, but an amalgam of two already
available drugs (an amphetamine and an anticonvulsant) shows
worryingly high incidence of subjectively serious side effects, has
been assumed to be the stronger market candidate. Given the public
perception of diet drugs, and the serious health risks involved in
giving a chemical speedball to overweight people and then telling them
to exercise on a nutrient restricted diet, I would stake the house on
the fact that when push comes to shove, neither doctors nor the
general public is going to give a very warm reception to Qnexa,
despite the impressive weight loss attached to treatment therewith.

Lorcaserin on the other hand, as mentioned above, just came back with
essentially zero side effects. The only side effect which exceeded a
2% difference with the side-effects reported by the placebo group was
a 7% difference in patients reporting headache. The rest of the
reported side-effects were either less than 2% separation or actually
had the placebo group reporting in high percentages than the
experimental group.

Additionally, there is the issue of subject mortality within the
control group:
"The Week 52 completion rate was higher for patients on lorcaserin
(55.4%) compared to those on placebo (45.1%). The difference is
primarily attributed to higher discontinuation rates for "Subject
Decision" (19.2% lorcaserin vs. 27.7% placebo), which includes "Lack
of Efficacy" (1.7% lorcaserin vs. 5.5% placebo)."

For those of you who haven't taken intro Stats classes, what this says
is that the people in the control group dropped out of the study at
WAY higher rate than those in the experimental (lorcaserin) group.
"Subject Decision" means that they dropped out because they wanted to
and "Lack of Efficacy" means they dropped out because they weren't
losing weight. Essentially what this means is that significantly more
people in the experimental group WERE NOT SEEING RESULTS, and
accordingly dropped out. Thus, the very people who were not losing
weight, whose lack of results were the result of being given the
placebo rather than the actual drug, had their data (the lack of
weight loss) excluded from the results of the study. The effect of
this differential "subject mortality" was undoubtedly to make the
placebo group weight loss higher – TO DECREASE THE STATISTICAL
SEPARATION IN REPORTED WEIGHT LOSS BETWEEN THE LORCASERIN AND CONTROL
GROUPS.

So to all of you out there shorting, or just reading the headlines off
whatever garbage "analyst" site that gets linked to the Google Finance
page, do your research, don't just read headlines. Arena has a solid
drug even with the data, because it showed itself to be effective
(47.5% lost 5% and 22.6% lost 10% on the drug compared with 20.3% and
7% on the placebo, even with the above problems with the data) WITHOUT
SIDE EFFECTS.

Because of the "First, do no harm" sympathies of the Doctors who will
be doing the prescribing – you're gonna see this risk-free drug
explode where a drug with an array of known and potentially serious
side effects will not.

For more information

http://arna.client.shareholder.com/releasedetail….
(these are the lorcaserin results)
http://ir.vivus.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=3... (these are the
Vivus/Qnexa results, you'll notice how brief they are)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topiramate (this is one of the two drugs
in the Qnexa compound)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phentermine (this is the other)

There is significant data on the health effects of the Qnexa drugs,
because they've been around for a long time. Check it out and then re-
read the Qnexa study.