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Tirzepatide – which is marketed under the name Mounjaro® – is currently used to treat type 2 diabetes but, as has happened with other antidiabetic drugs, such as Ozempic, it can have weight-loss effects, and now a new study has proven that treatment with this medication can help lose up to 24% of body weight.
The SURMOUNT-3 study was carried out by Eli Lilly & Company – the pharmaceutical company that developed tirzepatide – which published its results in the journal Nature Medicine, coinciding with its presentation at the 41st Annual Meeting of The Obesity Society (TOS). at ObesityWeek 2023, which was held in Dallas (Texas) between October 14 and 17.
SURMOUNT-3 was a multicenter, randomized, double-blind, parallel, placebo-controlled trial that compared the efficacy and safety of tirzepatide with placebo over 72 weeks, following an initial 12-week intensive lifestyle intervention period in adults. with obesity or overweight with weight-related comorbidities, excluding type 2 diabetes.
“Tirzepatide could offer a safe and highly effective alternative to surgery for some people with severe obesity”
After an initial 12 weeks of weight loss with intensive lifestyle intervention alone, participants in the SURMOUNT-3 study who were randomly assigned to tirzepatide for 72 weeks achieved a mean total baseline body weight reduction of 24. 3% in week 84.
“These are extraordinary findings showing that participants, who had already lost 6.9% of their baseline body weight with traditional diet and activity counseling, lost an additional 18.4% of body weight when given tirzepatide, in compared to a 2.5% gain in participants assigned to placebo,” said former TOS president Thomas Wadden, professor of psychology in psychiatry at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, which is the lead author of the paper, who added: “Additional weight loss produced additional improvements, compared with placebo, in multiple health measures, including waist circumference, blood pressure, cholesterol and triglycerides, blood sugar, blood and physical functioning.”
Ariana Chao, an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing in Baltimore, Maryland, and second author of the paper, presented the study and discussed its efficacy findings at ObesityWeek. “Since the start of the intensive lifestyle intervention, participants treated with tirzepatide had an average body weight loss of 64 pounds (29 kilos). “Health care providers have long sought strategies to help patients with obesity achieve losses of this magnitude, which can provide benefits to patients’ health and quality of life,” she stated.
Wadden added that “patients who received lifestyle intervention and tirzepatide achieved average weight loss consistent with that produced by sleeve gastrectomy, a procedure widely used in metabolic and bariatric surgery. “Tirzepatide could offer a safe and highly effective alternative to surgery for some people with severe obesity.”
What is tirzepatide and how does it help you lose weight?
Tirzepatide is a once-weekly glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide (GIP) receptor and glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonist, combined in a single molecule. The drug activates the body’s receptors for GIP and GLP-1, which are natural incretin hormones.
Both GIP and GLP-1 receptors are found in areas of our brain that are important for regulating appetite, and tirzepatide has been shown to reduce food intake by increasing feelings of satiety and decreasing hunger and diet-based eating. rewards.
Tirzepatide is a hypoglycemic agent, explained by the OCU (Organization of Consumers and Users), that is, it has the ability to reduce blood sugar levels. It is similar to the GLP-1 analogues, among which are the famous injections that are prescribed to lose weight in overweight or obese patients: Saxenda and Ozempic, which are currently in high demand and have therefore presented supply problems.
In previous clinical trials carried out with diabetic patients, it was observed that those receiving tirzepatide not only improved the control of their diabetes, but also lost an average of approximately 7 to 12 kg of weight, depending on the dose received. For this reason, the pharmaceutical company Lilly decided to conduct clinical trials aimed solely at evaluating the effectiveness of tirzepatide for weight loss in patients with obesity (with a BMI equal to or greater than 30) and without diabetes.
