A new study shows a recently-approved diabetes drug also helped people lose weight. (Advance file photo)Staten Island Advance
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — Last month, drugmaker Eli Lily’s tirzepatide, under the brand name Mounjaro, received approval from the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as an effective tool to help improve blood sugar regulation in people with Type 2 diabetes.
Now, researchers said the drug also has strong weight-loss benefits for people who don’t have diabetes.
In a study published in The New England Journal of Medicine, a team of scientists found people who used the drug once weekly lost between 35 and 52 pounds over the course of the 72-week research period — a significant result that could help expand treatment opportunities for people with obesity.
“In this study, about nine out of 10 individuals with obesity lost weight,” Dr. Ania Jastreboff, associate professor of Medicine and Pediatrics at the Yale School of Medicine and the lead author of the study, said in a release.
A study group of 2,539 adults without diabetes who had either a body mass index (BMI) over 30 or who were over 27 BMI and had one health-related complication were included in the tests.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention considers a BMI over 25 to be the threshold for being overweight. People over a 30 BMI fall within the obesity category.
The average weight of the participants at the start of the study was 231 pounds.
The team of researchers created four groups for the study — one, a placebo; a second group which received 5 mg of tirzepatide weekly; a third which received 10 mg; and a fourth which received 15 mg.
Each group was required to do 150 minutes of physical activity every week.
While the placebo group lost about five pounds, on average, the group that took 5 mg of the diabetes drug lost 35 pounds. That total increased to 49 pounds for the 10 mg group and 52 pounds for the 15 mg cohort.
People without diabetes, the researchers showed, lost between 15% and 20.9% of their body weight during the study period, compared to about 3.1% for those who took the placebo injection.
The study’s primary side effects were nausea, vomiting and diarrhea.
“These results are an important step forward in potentially expanding effective therapeutic options for individuals with obesity,” said Jastreboff in the release. “Obesity should be treated like any other chronic disease — with effective and safe approaches that target underlying disease mechanisms; these results underscore that tirzepatide may be doing just that.”
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