EnteroMedics, Inc. (ETRM) is Pulling its Weight in the Fight Against Obesity

EnteroMedics, Inc. (NASDAQ: ETRM) aims to make America leaner and fitter. The company, based in St. Paul, Minnesota, provides safe, reliable and effective products and therapies to treat obesity and metabolic disorders. Its signature technology, the vBloc® vagal blocking therapy delivered via the Maestro® Rechargeable System, is gaining increasing acceptance both domestically and abroad. vBloc® offers the overweight and the obese relief from those extra pounds that, all too often, trigger a variety of problematic medical conditions.

Overweight and obesity are global problems, but America appears to have taken the cake. The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, has published statistics that are quite alarming. ‘More than 2 in 3 adults are considered to be overweight or obese’ and ‘more than 1 in 3 adults are considered to be obese’.

Overweight is excess body weight due to too much muscle, bone, fat or water. Obesity is an excess amount of body fat. One measure of overweight and obesity is the Body Mass Index (BMI), which is a person’s weight (in kilograms) divided by the square of his or her height (in meters). Your weight is considered normal if the BMI is under 25. Anyone with a BMI over 25 and under 30 is considered overweight. If your BMI is 30 or over, you are obese.

Extra weight means extra stress for the vital organs. The liver, heart, kidneys and pancreas are all adversely affected by visceral fat, the internal fatty tissue that develops to enfold them. Unlike the benign deposits of fat that lie just beneath the skin, which shape our figures, visceral fat is highly toxic. ‘Visceral fat has been linked to metabolic disturbances and increased risk for cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. In women, it is also associated with breast cancer and the need for gallbladder surgery’, according to this (http://dtn.fm/tR3tv) Harvard Medical School publication. The NIDDK lists the health risks of overweight and obesity as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, nonalcoholic fatty liver disorders, osteoarthritis, stroke and cancers of the breast, colon, uterine lining and kidney.

Chronic cases of overweight and obesity are treated by surgery. American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery (ASMBS) figures, as reported by News Medical (http://dtn.fm/mM8vM), relate that ‘about 193,000 people had bariatric surgery in 2014… sleeve gastrectomy was… found to be the most common procedure, accounting for 51.7 percent of weight-loss operations, followed by gastric bypass (26.8%), gastric band (9.5%), and biliopancreatic diversion with duodenal switch (0.4%).’ These are all intensely intrusive procedures with many risks that may be hard to stomach. Sleeve gastrectomy, for example, is a procedure in which up to 80 percent of the stomach can be removed.

The vBloc® vagal blocking therapy from EnteroMedics, Inc. is, on the other hand, minimally invasive. It is implanted under the skin just outside the ribcage and involves limited scarring. Recovery time from surgery is short. Some patients reported having the surgery on Friday and going out to work the following Monday.

The vBloc® Therapy works to control sensations of hunger using a pacemaker-like device. A Briefing Document (http://dtn.fm/gY7a9) on the FDA website indicates that when the therapy is used for 12 hours per day as prescribed, patients experienced an average excess weight loss of 28 percent over one year. This was 50 percent more weight loss than patients who did not receive vBloc®.

In June 2016, EnteroMedics announced a series of successful vBloc procedures at the Beltline Bariatric and Surgical Group in Atlanta, Georgia. And this week, it was disclosed that the European Patent Office had issued a Notice of Intention to Grant a European Patent covering safety features of the Company’s vBloc® Neurometabolic Therapy System. EnteroMedics, with its vBloc® Therapy, is beginning to look like a heavy hitter.

For more information, please visit www.vbloc.com

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