Saxenda

Saxenda is a weight loss medication containing Liraglutide. It is a daily injection that works by controlling your appetite, so you feel fuller and feel less hungry. Patients using Saxenda tend to eat less food and this helps reduce body weight.

• Saxenda comes in a box of 5 x 3ml pens, each pen containing 18mg of Liraglutide.
• Saxenda is injected once per day, preferably at the same time every day. It is given as an injection under the skin in the thigh, upper arm or belly. The dose is slowly increased over 4 weeks.
• The Saxenda starting dose is 0.6mg daily for one week and then increased by 0.6mg each week until you reach your maintenance dose which is usually 3mg daily.
• On a maintenance dose, each Saxenda pen will last 6 days.
• Saxenda pens can inject variable doses using an easy to use dial that can adjust the dose from 0.6mg, 1.2mg, 1.8mg, 2.4mg or 3mg

Saxenda has been shown to be effective at reducing body weight in 5 main studies involving over 5,800 adults who had obesity or were overweight. These studies lasted up to 56 weeks and compared Saxenda with placebo. Patients in the studies were given the medicine as part of a weight loss programme involving counselling and advice on diet and physical activity.

When analysing the results of the 5 studies together, Saxenda, given at the maximum recommended dose, led to a 7.5% reduction in body weight, compared with a 2.3% reduction in patients taking placebo. Patients treated with Saxenda had a continuous decrease in body weight during the first 40 weeks of treatment, after which the weight loss achieved was maintained. Weight loss was more pronounced in women than in men.

When the figures for the main studies were re-analysed using a more conservative method that assumed that patients who did not complete the study (around 30%) would not have seen any improvement, similar but smaller weight reductions with Saxenda were noted.