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Biotech / Medical : GelTex Pharmaceuticals (GELX) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Robert L. Ray who wrote (82)	9/21/1998 2:50:00 PM
From: H. Bradley Toland, Jr.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 127

A second Renagel follow up. My conclusion for the dialysis market is comparable to your $200 - $300 million a year. I get to $500 million because the number for people with impaired kidney function, but not on dialysis, in the U.S. alone is greater than 800,000. Many of these are good candidates to use Renagel even though they may never be on dialysis. Geltex has begun a study for predialysis patients but once a product is approved, Nephrologists may use it as they see fit. My expectation (or hope!) is that Renagel will enjoy a quick sales ramp-up for the 1/3 of dialysis patients who are hypercalcemic and then act like the energizer bunny--just steady growth quarter after quarter. Doug Rogers

To: Robert L. Ray who wrote (82)	9/25/1998 3:20:00 PM
From: Robert L. Ray	Respond to of 127

Orlistat/Xenical (Roche) news from Yahoo dailynews.yahoo.com Orlistat users still need to diet LONDON, Sep 25 (Reuters) -- Obese patients who take the drug orlistat will still have to diet in order to lose weight, according to a British nutritionist. Orlistat (Xenical), which was approved for sale in Europe last month, helps patients lose weight by causing 30% of dietary fat to be excreted in the feces, former professor of human nutrition John Garrow writes in an editorial in the September 26th issue of the British Medical Journal. But many obese patients will be surprised to discover that more than half of their eventual weight loss will be due to diet rather than to the drug, he says. Garrow notes that some media reports said that the drug would enable obese people to eat what they like and still lose weight. ''This is highly misleading,'' he writes. As reported by Reuters Health, a recent 2-year double-blind prospective trial of orlistat therapy showed that obese patients who took the drug lost more and regained less weight than patients given a placebo (inactive substance). Both groups were on hypocaloric diets that were 600 kcal below daily energy expenditure. Garrow comments that while the weight losses achieved by orlistat users were clinically significant, diet accounted for more than half of the reductions. Moreover, patients taking the drug will voluntarily reduce their fat in take in order to avoid side effects of the drug, including fatty stools, increased defecation, and oily spotting. ''Anyone taking orlistat who eats a high-fat diet will receive a powerful incentive to reduce fat intake,'' Garrow said, referring to these side effects. ''It will be ironic if this new drug succeeds by exactly the action which it was said not to have -- by inducing obese people to keep to a low-fat reducing diet,'' he adds. Garrow also writes that weight loss similar to that seen in studies of the drug are possible over 6 months ''if energy intake had been reduced by a similar amount; this is not impossible with well-supervised outpatient dieting.'' Orlistat has not been approved in the United States, but is currently undergoing review by the US Food and Drug Administration.