A Randomized, Controlled Trial of Liraglutide for Adolescents with Obesity

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of Liraglutide, published as a randomized controlled trial.

Obesity is a chronic disease with limited treatment options in pediatric patients.

Liraglutide may be useful for weight management in adolescents with obesity.

Who Took Part

PubMed indexes the participants as children and teenagers, both men and women.

In this randomized, double-blind trial, which consisted of a 56-week treatment period and a 26-week follow-up period, the researchers enrolled adolescents (12 to <18 years of age) with obesity and a poor response to lifestyle therapy alone.

How the Study Was Run

The design is described as randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled.

Random assignment meant chance, not the researchers, decided who got Liraglutide and who got the comparison, which limits bias.

Blinding on both sides kept the participants and researchers unaware of who received Liraglutide.

The comparison arm used a placebo, so changes seen with Liraglutide could be set against what happens without it.

The primary end point was the change from baseline in the body-mass index (BMI; the weight in kilograms divided by the square of the height in meters) standard-deviation score at week 56.

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Blood Glucose, Body Mass Index, Combined Modality Therapy, Gastrointestinal Diseases, Glycated Hemoglobin, Healthy Lifestyle and Incretins.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Liraglutide.

The abstract goes on to report its results in about 10 sentences; this page does not restate them, so read the paper for the findings and their limits.

The publication is from 2020 (The New England journal of medicine), a journal based in United States.

More context: the Liraglutide compound page.