- Study participants lost a total of 26% of body weight when drug therapy was combined with lifestyle intervention.
- Mounjaro, or tripeptide, is approved for treating type 2 diabetes but can also be prescribed off-label for weight loss.
- The drug targets parts of the brain involved in hunger and satiety.
A group of people with obesity who undertook an intensive lifestyle intervention followed by treatment with the appetite inhibiting drug tirzepatide lost 26% of their body weight in the course of the 84-week program, according to a study conducted by drugmaker Eli Lilly.
The findings were presented at the 2023 annual meeting this week of The Obesity Society and were
“[P]articipants — who had already lost 6.9 percent of their baseline body weight with [12 weeks of] traditional diet and activity counseling — lost an additional 18.4 percent of body weight when administered tirzepatide, compared with a gain of 2.5 percent in participants assigned to [a] placebo” group, said Dr. Thomas Wadden, the study lead author and a professor of psychology in psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, in a press statement. “The additional weight loss produced further improvements, compared with placebo, in multiple measures of health, including waist circumference, blood pressure, cholesterol and triglycerides, blood sugar and physical functioning.”
The initial weight loss was recorded over a 72-week period. There was another small decrease in weight loss during an additional 12-week period for a total of 26% over 84 weeks.
Tirzepatide, sold under the brand name Mounjaro, is approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to treat type 2 diabetes but also may be effective when prescribed as a treatment for obesity, past studies have shown.
“Obesity medicine physicians have seen a substantial increase in the off-label use of tirzepatide for the treatment of obesity,” Dr. Aleem Kanji, an…
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