A weekly dose of a diabetes drug appears to cause significant weight loss in obese people, in a development experts have called groundbreaking.
Obesity causes 1.2 million deaths in Europe every year, according to the World Health Organization. Efforts to fight the disease have long focused on diet and exercise, but many people who lose weight this way find that they gain it back over time.
Now researchers say a diabetes drug used alongside such interventions can help obese people. Participants in a 72-week trial lost up to 20% of their body weight.
writing in the diary New England Medicalan international team reports how it randomly divided 2,539 overweight or obese participants into four equal groups.
One group was offered a self-administered placebo injection once a week for 72 weeks, while the other three groups were offered 5mg, 10mg or 15mg of a drug called tirzepatide. All participants also received regular lifestyle counseling sessions to help them stick to low-calorie meals and at least 150 minutes of physical activity per week.
On average, the participants had a body weight of 104.8 kg of which 94.5% were considered obese. The majority were white and female, and none had diabetes.
Results from those who completed the assigned intervention—nearly 82% of the sample—reveal that at the end of the 72-week period, participants who received 5 mg of tirzepatide each week lost an average of 16, 1 kg, those who received 10 mg lost an average of 22.2 kg and those who received 15 mg an average of 23.6 kg. Those who received a placebo injection lost an average of 2.4 kg.
The team adds that among those who received the higher dose of tirzepatide, 91% of participants lost 5% or more of their body weight, compared to 35% of those who received the placebo. Fifty-seven percent of those given the highest dose lost 20% or more of their body weight, compared with 3% of those given the placebo.
“We should be treating obesity like we treat any chronic disease – with effective and safe approaches that target the underlying disease mechanisms and these findings underscore that tirzepatide can do just that. said Dr Ania Jastreboff of Yale University, the lead author of the research.
Learn more: The Guardian