Excess weight on women’s hips and men’s waistlines increases the risk of blood clots

A new drug designed to improve diabetes patients' blood sugar control can help reduce weight in obese people without diabetes, scientists have said.

An injection of a high dose of liraglutide, which is also known as Victoza, causes greater weight loss than a dose of orlistat, which is available by prescription as Xenical.

The rate of obesity has risen three-fold over the past 20 years and is more than 30% in some European countries, with about 50% of all adults in Europe classified as overweight.

Professor Arne Astrup and her colleagues at the department of human nutrition at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, said: "The results of this study indicate the potential benefit of liraglutide, in conjunction with an energy-deficit diet, in the treatment of obesity and associated risk factors.

"Liraglutide offers a new mode of action for the treatment of obesity and improved efficacy compared with currently available therapies."

The study, published in the science journal The Lancet, also found that liraglutide reduced the prevalence of prediabetes - poor blood glucose control not yet bad enough to qualify as diabetes - by 84%-96%.

But Dr George Bray, of the division of clinical obesity and metabolism at Pennington Biomedical Research Centre, Louisiana State University, warned that one limitation to the use of drugs such as liraglutide was that they required an injection.

He said: "Whether long-term use of an injectable drug is palatable as a treatment for obesity is yet to be established."

The scientists called for further studies, with a longer follow-up than 20 weeks, to establish the long-term risk-benefit profile for liraglutide.

The Europe-wide study of more than 500 patients aged 18-65 found that participants on liraglutide lost significantly more weight than those on a placebo and orlistat.