Nar­can mak­er Opi­ant shelves bu­lim­ia pro­gram af­ter mid-stage flop

Nar­can mak­er Opi­ant Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals has ad­mit­ted de­feat in a mid-stage tri­al test­ing a nasal spray ver­sion of nalox­one in pa­tients with bu­lim­ia, prompt­ing the Cal­i­for­nia-based com­pa­ny to aban­don the de­vel­op­ment of the for­mu­la­tion al­to­geth­er.

The Phase II tri­al test­ed the drug — OP­NT001 — against a place­bo in 86 pa­tients with bu­lim­ia. The po­ten­tial­ly life-threat­en­ing, ad­dic­tive eat­ing dis­or­der is typ­i­cal­ly seen in women, and is char­ac­ter­ized by a cy­cle of bing­ing and com­pen­sato­ry be­hav­iors such as self-in­duced vom­it­ing, fast­ing, ex­ces­sive ex­er­cise or mis­us­ing lax­a­tives to make up for the glut­tony. Cog­ni­tive be­hav­ioral ther­a­py is con­sid­ered the pri­ma­ry treat­ment for bu­lim­ia, ac­cord­ing to the British Med­ical Jour­nal.

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