New research suggests that Eli Lilly’s tirzepatide can boost existing efforts to lose weight. The company’s latest clinical trial found that people who dropped at least 5% of their weight before taking the drug went on to lose substantially more weight than those who took a placebo. Those in the treatment group ultimately lost 25% of their baseline weight on average, or about 60 pounds, over a 16-month period.
Tirzepatide is the active ingredient in Eli Lilly’s type 2 diabetes drug Mounjaro, approved by the Food and Drug Administration last year. It combines two synthetic versions of hormones key to controlling our hunger and metabolism, GLP-1 and GIP. The FDA is expected to approve tirzepatide as a treatment for obesity in the coming months, based on large-scale, randomized, and controlled clinical trials showing its effectiveness in helping people with obesity lose weight.
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Earlier published trials of the injectable drug have found that people taking it generally lose around 20% of their baseline weight on average. On Sunday, researchers published results from another of these studies in the journal Nature Medicine, the SURMOUNT-3 trial.
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This trial tested how people might respond to the drug if they first underwent an “intensive lifestyle intervention”—in other words, a calorie-restrictive diet and exercise program. It involved over 500 overweight and obese people who successfully lost at least 5% of their weight during a 12-week program. These people were then randomly assigned to either take tirzepatide or a placebo over the next 72 weeks, or about 16 months.
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By the end of the study, the treatment group experienced about 21% additional weight loss on average, amounting to a total weight loss of 25%. The placebo group, on the other hand, gained some of their weight back, ending at a total weight loss of 4.8% on average. Three-quarters of the participants on tirzepatide also kept at least 10% of their weight off, compared to less than 10% of the placebo group. Adverse events linked to the drug were similar to those seen in past trials, with the majority being mild to moderate gastrointestinal issues like nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea.
“This study says that if you lose weight before you start the drug, you can then add a lot more weight loss after,” lead study author Thomas Wadden, a obesity researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, told the AP.
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The findings reaffirm how difficult it can be to achieve and sustain even modest weight loss through diet and exercise alone, while also being the latest to show that tirzepatide and similar drugs represent a new era in anti-obesity medication. Tirzepatide seems to be more effective than Novo Nordisk’s semaglutide, which was approved by the FDA to treat obesity in 2021. In clinical trials, people taking semaglutide for obesity have lost around 15% of their weight on average. And there are yet more drugs in the pipeline that might help people lose even more weight than either option, or could offer other advantages such as being easier to take via a pill.
Like all drugs, however, these medications have negatives that have to be evaluated against their expected positives. In addition to common gastrointestinal issues, they have been linked to rare complications like the temporary paralysis of stomach or gut muscles. The longer-term risks of these drugs, which many people might need to take for life to maintain weight loss, are still being studied, as are their other potential benefits. Recent studies have found that semaglutide can reduce heart problems and kidney disease in obese people vulnerable to these conditions, for instance.
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