Research

Energy balance

Orlistat (120 mg three times daily with meals) produces significant weight loss and improves coronary heart disease risk profiles in obese patients, primarily by reducing dietary fat absorption.

Take 120 mg of Orlistat with each main meal containing fat. This blocks about 30% of dietary fat absorption. Stick to a low-fat diet to minimize gastrointestinal side effects like oily spotting. This leads to greater weight loss and improved heart disease risk factors compared to diet and placebo alone.

GoodSupportsHIGH confidence
Orlistat (Xenical, 120 mg three times daily with meals) is a novel, nonsystemic, nonsynergistic antiobesity agent that inhibits the absorption of dietary fat by about 30% [20]. In randomized, double-blind placebo controlled trials, weight loss can be achieved with dietary fat restriction [11-13].
Folke Lindgärde · Journal of Internal Medicine · 2000

Why this rating

The study is a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, which is high-quality evidence, though the sample size is moderate (n=380).

Source

The effect of orlistat on body weight and coronary heart disease risk profile in obese patients: The Swedish Multimorbidity Study

Folke Lindgärde · Journal of Internal Medicine · 2000

DOI 10.1046/j.1365-2796.2000.00720.x

rct · n=380Cited 205×
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DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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