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A new study has found that an experimental drug, phentermine/topiramate, has helped significantly more overweight patients with diabetes lose weight. The findings of the study will be presented on Saturday, June 30, 2012 at The Endocrine Society's 94th Annual Meeting in Houston.

Diabetes treatment involves weight supervision and medications to regulate blood-sugar levels and risk factors. If left untreated, diabetes can increase the danger of developing heart and blood-vessel diseases. Since one of the main risk factors for all of these diseases is obesity, weight loss is important to both prevention and treatment.

"This new medication is promising because of the amount of weight loss it produces, the resultant improvement in important risk factors for diabetes, and, particularly in the lower dose studied, in its tolerability," said the study's lead author and professor emeritus at Pennington Biomedical Research Center Donna H. Ryan in a news release.

Phentermine/topiramate is a combined medication that works by decreasing appetite. 

Researchers found that patients with type 2 diabetes who took the experimental weight-loss drug, combined with diet and exercise modifications, were more likely to lose temperate amounts of weight than those who received a sugar-pill placebo and the diet and exercise intervention.

Randomly assigned, 357 patients with type 2 diabetes received either low-dose phentermine/topiramate (7.5 milligrams), high-dose phentermine/topiramate (15 milligrams), or placebo. The researchers or patients did not know who was receiving the drug versus placebo in the double-blinded study.

Participants' average age was 53 years, 66 percent were female, most were white, and their average weight was 222 pounds. Follow-up was one year.

The percentage of study participants losing more than 10 percent of their initial weight while decreasing their blood pressure and hemoglobin A1c, was:

• 14 percent on low-dose phentermine/topiramate
• 31 percent on high-dose phentermine/topiramate
• 4 percent on placebo

The main side effects of the drug were constipation and tingling sensations in the fingers.