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Most Obesity Drugs Do Not Improve Quality of Life or Heart Health, Analysis Indicates
Despite substantial weight loss, most obesity drugs such as Wegovy and Mounjaro do not meaningfully improve quality of life, and few show cardiovascular benefits at one year, according to an analysis of the latest evidence published by The BMJ. More weight loss is also generally accompanied by greater harms, including stomach and bowel symptoms, fatigue and loss of lean (muscle) mass, and improvements are not sustained after stopping treatment.
Several drugs for adults with overweight or obesity produce substantial weight loss, but most have not been compared directly in head-to-head trials, leaving uncertainty about the broader balance of benefits and harms. To address this, researchers searched scientific databases for randomized controlled trials comparing one or more drugs with lifestyle changes, placebo or another drug.
They found 262 eligible trials involving 99,791 participants (average age 49; 63% female; average BMI 35) that evaluated 19 currently available and emerging obesity drugs with follow-up ranging from 12 to 172 weeks. Benefits included changes in body weight, fat mass and quality of life, while potential harms included changes in lean mass, gastrointestinal adverse events, gallbladder-related disorders and fatigue.
New Study Advances Dry mRNA Vaccine Patch Design
New research could help make future mRNA vaccines easier to store and distribute.The study, involving RMIT University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard Medical School, identified conditions that help protect the particles that carry mRNA in dry vaccine patches, offering practical guidance for future patch design.
Published in Advanced Functional Materials, the study examines what happens to the fragile particles used to carry mRNA when they are dried into the dissolvable material used in microneedle patches. The patches use hundreds of tiny tips to deliver vaccine into the skin as an alternative to traditional injections.
Sanofi to Stop Disparaging Rival Flu Vaccine to Stave off EU Antitrust Fine
French pharmaceutical company Sanofi has offered to state publicly that a rival flu vaccine is as effective as its own, EU antitrust regulators said on Wednesday of the company, which faces a fine for allegedly disparaging its competitor.
Sanofi’s proposal came two weeks after the Commission opened an investigation into whether the company disparaged a rival vaccine called “Fluad” made by CSL Seqirus primarily in France and Germany, which competes with its “Efluelda” flu vaccine. The EU antitrust regulators said such behaviour may have restricted competition for such vaccines in Germany and France.
Sanofi said it was complying with the Commission to bring the proceedings to a swift conclusion. “The submission of commitments does not imply any finding of infringement. Sanofi remains confident that it has acted, and continues to act, in full compliance with all applicable laws and regulations, including competition law,” the company said. EU regulators have in recent years handed out hefty fines to drugmakers charged with badmouthing rivals. Such sanctions can be as much as 10% of a company’s global annual turnover.
More Pharmacists Will Be Able to Vaccinate Children Under 5. Here’s What You Need to Know
More children under five years old should be able to be vaccinated in pharmacies from January 2027 under a range of measures designed to boost vaccine coverage announced in this year’s federal budget. Other measures include funding to send families SMS reminders and targeted information when their child’s vaccines are due. These measures aim to stem a decline in childhood vaccine coverage we’ve seen since 2020.
Vaccine coverage in Australian children has been steadily declining since 2020. The latest data show a drop in fully vaccinated 12-month-olds from 94.8% in 2020 to 90.5% in 2025. On-time vaccination (getting a routine vaccine within 30 days of the recommended age) has dropped even further compared with levels before the COVID pandemic. In 2025, nearly two in five children received the first dose of measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine (recommended at 12 months old) late.
One in five children received their second dose of a diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis (DTP)-containing vaccine late. Two out of ten adolescents had not received a human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine dose by 15 years of age. Three out of ten had not received an adolescent dose of meningococcal ACWY vaccine by 17 years of age.
Scientists Finally Crack Nature’s Secret for Building Better Cancer Drugs
For years, scientists have hoped to harness bacterial enzymes to create new drug variants through a process known as combinatorial biosynthesis. However, progress has been limited because researchers did not fully understand how the enzymes coordinate their work.
Published in Nature Communications, the new study reveals how bacterial enzymes communicate with one another to assemble a family of closely related anti-cancer compounds. That family includes Romidepsin (Istodax), an FDA-approved treatment for certain blood cancers.
By uncovering this natural “mix and match” system and reproducing its underlying principles in the laboratory, the researchers have established a new strategy for designing future cancer therapies.
“For decades, we’ve known that bacteria can naturally produce multiple versions of powerful anti-cancer drugs, yet we had no idea how they achieved this,” said first author Dr. Munro Passmore, Research Fellow, Department of Chemistry, University of Warwick. “This work finally cracks that code. We’ve identified how the different enzymes communicate and cooperate to produce these drug variants, something that has eluded researchers because the system is so elegantly economical. It’s the breakthrough we needed to actually engineer these drugs ourselves.”
