FAT REDUCING CREAM?

Report #6338 10/13/94

Entrepreneurs market a cream that they advertise by the name of "thigh smoother." If they called it a thigh reducer, they could have an embarrassing confrontation with The Food and Drug Administration.

The only way that you can lose fat is by eating less or exercising more. The cream contains a common asthma medication called aminophylline. There is no evidence that aminophylline creams get rid of fat. Drs George Bray and Frank Greenway placed 5 obese women on a very low-calorie diet containing only 1200 calories. They then injected a chemical similar to the caffeine in coffee/ and theophylline in tea and reported that the women's thighs had a narrower circumference. When people go on a low-calorie diet without taking injections, they lose fat. Women lose fat most from their thighs, hips and breasts, so this study does not show that injections help reduce fat thighs.

I was unable to find any reports showing that aminophylline creams reduce thigh fat, but I did find one summary of a report by the same two doctors in the journal, Obesity Research, claiming that a cream containing 2% aminophylline reduces thigh circumference of obese women by one half an inch. These same two doctors hold a patent on the cream which is sold to the public.

There is no data to show that the dose of aminophylline in the cream reduces fat and there is no evidence that the aminophylline is absorbed from the cream through the skin. Two weeks supply of the creams cost 30 to $40.

By Gabe Mirkin, M.D., for CBS Radio News