Newest Diet News: Spray Away Obesity

Obviously the best way to lose weight and fight habits that cause you to overeat is to teach your mind not to want to eat, right? Doing that is next to impossible with there being so much attention paid to food in America. Just walk through the mall on any given afternoon and your senses will be assaulted by the appetizing aromas of pizza parlors, cinnamon bun shops, and freshly baked cookies—and that’s not even counting the tantalizing smells in the food court. And once you get your first nibble of something delicious, it’s nearly impossible to stop until everything has been nibbled away.

One company in Cambridge, Massachusetts, thinks it has the answer to finally being able to stifle your interest in food—and that answer will come in a little spray bottle. Compellis Pharmaceuticals was awarded a patent for a nasal spray designed to fight obesity by blocking the senses of smell and taste, and the company plans to begin human trials next year.

Christopher Adams, the company’s founder and chief, told Reuters that the premise behind the product, known as CP404, is a simple one, since the pleasurable effect of eating is all stimulated by smell and taste. "The premise is that olfactory activity that controls both smell and taste is a trigger and a feedback mechanism to eat. If you have some kind of reduced sense of smell or taste, you tend to eat less," he said.

CP404 is just the latest suggestion in the arsenal of devices and treatments under development around the world. French pharmaceutical company Sanofi-Aventis has already begun marketing its new obesity pill Acomplia, which switches off the same circuits in the brain that make people hungry when they get high on marijuana. Medtronic, Inc., the world’s largest manufacturer of medical devices, is developing a battery-powered gastric pacemaker that will cause the stomach to send signals of fullness to the appetite center of the brain. And Minneapolis-based Enteromedics, Inc., is working with the Mayo Clinic to fine-tune a device that uses electricity to paralyze the stomach, reducing the contractions that help to digest food so it stays in the stomach longer.

The Compellis nasal spray is years away from reaching consumers, but Adams is planning to begin human trials next year and hopes to seek FDA approval about three years later. The spray treatment would retail at about $500 to $1,000 a year.