A weekly dose of a drug recently approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), an agency similar to Anvisa in the United States, to treat type 2 diabetes may help adults without diabetes lose weight, too, a new study finds.
Tirzepatide, which is sold under the brand name Mounjaro, has been studied in people without diabetes at three dosages: 5, 10, and 15 milligrams. Participants who were obese or overweight and taking the 5-milligram dose lost an average of 16 pounds, those on the 10-milligram dose lost an average of 22 pounds, and participants on the 15-milligram dose lost an average of 23 pounds. 6 kg.
“Nearly 40% of subjects lost a quarter of their body weight,” said co-author Ania Jastreboff, co-director of the Yale Center for Weight Management in a statement.
“The data was pretty impressive,” said Robert Gabbay, medical director of the American Diabetes Association, who spoke to CNN of the ADA’s 82nd Scientific Sessions in New Orleans, where the study results were presented.
“The weight loss they achieved in this study was even greater than what had been seen in previous studies of people with diabetes,” said Gabbay, who was not involved in the study.
“The mid-range weight loss for people in this new study was 49 pounds [22 kg] – 49 pounds is a lot,” he said. “It’s the weight loss range that we normally think is only possible through surgery.”
In all, people without diabetes lost an average of 15% to 20.9% of their initial body weight over the course of the 72-week clinical trial, published Saturday in The New England Journal of Medicine. Participants who received placebo, a substance with no effect on the body, lost between 2.4% and 3.1% of their body weight, on average.
In comparison, studies with people with diabetes who used tirzepatide indicated an average loss of 15% of initial body weight, Gabbay said.
“This is not an unusual observation,” he said. “The impact of previous weight loss medications are less effective in people with diabetes, and honestly, we don’t know exactly why.”
However, the impact of tirzepatide on people with diabetes is still “profound,” Gabbay said, “providing much more than other tools we’ve had.”
self-injected dose
For the new study, weekly injections of tirzepatide were tested in more than 2,500 people without diabetes who had a body mass index (BMI) above 30 or 27 and had at least one weight-related health condition, such as high blood pressure, cholesterol. high or cardiovascular disease. A measure of a person’s height-to-weight ratio, a BMI of 25 or greater is considered overweight in adults.
At the start of the study, participants had an average weight of 104.8 kg and an average BMI of 38.
The adults in the study injected themselves with tirzepatide or a placebo once a week, using “a tiny pen-like device with a tiny needle,” Gabbay said. “The prick of this needle is less painful than, for example, people who prick their fingers to measure blood glucose.”
People in the study were also given counseling sessions to help them maintain a healthy diet with a daily deficit of 500 calories, as well as at least 150 minutes of physical activity a week. While that certainly helped, it doesn’t explain the magnitude of weight loss seen in the study, Gabbay said.
“The kind of weight loss we see when people exercise and change their calorie intake is somewhere on the order of 5% to 7%,” he said. “This study showed profoundly greater weight loss, far above what we would imagine with lifestyle changes.”
The most common side effects reported were nausea, diarrhea and constipation. Between 2.6% and 7.1% of participants discontinued treatment due to adverse events.
The drug Mounjaro carries a boxed warning about thyroid tumors and should not be used by people with a family history of specific thyroid conditions.
“Obesity should be treated like any other chronic disease – with effective and safe approaches that target (causes of) underlying disease … and these results underscore that tirzepatide may be doing just that,” said Ania, from the Yale Center for Weight Management in a statement from the American Diabetes Association.
“These results are an important step forward in the potential expansion of effective therapeutic options for people with obesity.”
Source: CNN Brasil
