Lorcaserin induces abdominal fat loss with associated improvements of the circulating metabolome/lipidome and no changes in the myostatin-activin-follistatin-IGF-1 axes: A 6-month long randomized placebo-controlled clinical trial

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of IGF-1 LR3, published as a randomized controlled trial.

This study investigated whether lorcaserin, a centrally acting weight loss agent, modifies body composition, circulating lipidomic profiles, and muscle-regulating hormones within the myostatin-activin-follistatin-IGF-1 (MAFI) axes.

Who Took Part

The age groups tagged for this paper are adults and middle-aged adults, both men and women.

Changes were analysed using linear mixed models with fixed effects for time, treatment and interaction.

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study.

Random assignment meant chance, not the researchers, decided who got IGF-1 LR3 and who got the comparison, which limits bias.

Neither the participants nor the staff measuring them knew who was on IGF-1 LR3, so expectations could not easily colour the readings.

Some participants received a placebo instead of IGF-1 LR3, giving a reference point.

Regional body composition, hormones and lipidomics were assessed.

Adjusted deltas and endpoints were compared by analysis of covariance controlling for baseline body mass index.

Lipidomic profiles were analysed using principal component and partial least-squares discriminant analyses.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Insulin-Like Growth Factor I, Metabolome, Myostatin, Abdominal Fat, Body Composition, Follistatin and Anti-Obesity Agents.

The authors tagged it with the keywords IGF‐1, activin, fat mass, lean mass and lipidome.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of IGF-1 LR3.

Its findings take up roughly 6 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2026 (Diabetes, obesity & metabolism), a journal based in England.

More context: the IGF-1 LR3 compound page, all human trials.