Combination of diethylpropion with dietary intervention results in body weight and fat loss with preserved muscle mass in obese patients.

Combining pharmacotherapy with lifestyle intervention is recommended for obese class II patients who fail lifestyle therapy and for obese class I patients. Diethylpropion, an obesity medication, has been approved for use in Indonesia, which is an Asia-Pacific country. This retrospective study aimed to assess the short-term effects of diethylpropion on weight and fat loss in obese patients in Indonesia. Secondary data were collected from 142 patients' medical records with a body mass index ≥ 25 kg/m2 who underwent short-term diethylpropion treatment for 84 days between January 2022 and November 2023 at the Kimia Farma Nutrition Clinic in Bandung, Indonesia. Blood pressure, body weight, height, waist circumference, and body composition were assessed at each follow-up visit to determine the fat and muscle mass. Patients were prescribed diethylpropion 25 mg 3 times daily every 2 weeks together with dietary intervention. Kruskal-Wallis test was used to analyze the changes in body weight, skeletal muscle, fat mass, and waist circumference after the diethylpropion therapy. Mann-Whitney test was used for the relation between age, sex, and body mass index with weight loss on the last day of follow-up. Simple linear regression analysis was also performed to identify the correlation between weight loss and therapy duration. This study showed body weight reduction of up to 9.5 ±â€…3 kg (10 ±â€…0.0%) (P = .008) on 84 days of treatment. Significant fat loss 11.5 ±â€…4.6 kg (20.5 ±â€…0.0%) (P = .005) was also reported in our study without significant loss of muscle mass -2.4 ±â€…4.6 kg (3.6 ±â€…1.3%) (P = .58). Waist circumference was insignificantly reduced by 5.6 ±â€…0.0 cm (4.9 ±â€…2.8%) (P = .21) after 84 days of diethylpropion therapy. This study revealed no significant changes in patient systolic and diastolic pressures despite showing mild increases after 70 days. The combination of diethylpropion and an appropriate diet resulted in weight loss accompanied by significant fat loss and preserved muscle mass without an increase in blood pressure during the 12-week treatment period.

The Role of Amino Acids in Tuberculosis Infection: A Literature Review.

Recently, there was an abundance of studies being conducted on the metabolomic profiling of tuberculosis patients. Amino acids are critical metabolites for the immune system, as they might contribute to providing nutrients for the host intracellular pathway. In tuberculosis, several amino acids play important roles in both the mycobacteria infection mechanism and the host. Individual studies showed how the dynamics of metabolite products that result from interactions between Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) and the host play important roles in different stages of infection. In this review, we focus on the dynamics of amino-acid metabolism and identify the prominent roles of amino acids in the diagnostics and treatment of tuberculosis infection. Online resources, including PubMed, ScienceDirect, Scopus, and Clinical Key, were used to search for articles with combination keywords of amino acids and TB. The inclusion criteria were full-text articles in English published in the last 10 years. Most amino acids were decreased in patients with active TB compared with those with latent TB and healthy controls. However, some amino acids, including leucine, isoleucine, valine, phenylalanine, aspartate, and glutamate, were found to be at higher levels in TB patients. Additionally, the biomarkers of Mtb infection included the ratios of kynurenine to tryptophan, phenylalanine to histidine, and citrulline to arginine. Most amino acids were present at different levels in different stages of infection and disease progression. The search for additional roles played by those metabolomic biomarkers in each stage of infection might facilitate diagnostic tools for staging TB infection.