Diabetes drug leads to notable weight loss in people with obesity – study

A weekly dose of a diabetes drug appears to lead to significant weight loss in obese people.

The UK has one of the highest rates of obese people in the world.

Efforts to tackle the disease have long been focused on diet and exercise, but many people who lose weight lose it back over time.

People with diabetes can be helped by a diabetes drug. A group of people lost as much as 20% of their body weight.

An international team report how they randomly split 2,539 overweight or obese people into four equal groups.

One group was given a placebo once a week for 72 weeks, while the other three groups were given either 5, 10, or 15 grams of the drug. Regular lifestyle counseling sessions were given to all participants to help them stick to low- calories meals and at least 150 minutes of physical activity a week.

On average, participants had a body weight of over 13 stone. Most of the people were white and females.

The results from those who stuck to the assigned intervention show that at the end of the 72 week period, participants who received 5mg of the drug every week lost an average of 16.1 kilogram, those who received 10mg lost an average of 22.2 kilogram, and those who received no intervention lost The people who received a placebo lost an average of 2.4 kilogram.

The team says that among those who got the highest dose of the drug, they lost more weight than those who got the placebo. Fifty-seven per cent of those given the highest dose lost at least 20% of their body weight, compared with 3% of those given the placebo.

The lead author of the research, Dr Ania Jastreboff of Yale University, said that obese people should be treated like any other chronic disease.

In February, the UK's National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) approved the use of another drug, semaglutide, for certain groups of people with Obesity.

Prof Rachel Batterham, who was not involved in the work, said that like semaglutide, it works by mimicking hormones in the body that help people feel full after eating.

Tirzepatide mimics two hormones, which may explain why the latter seems to have a greater effect.

It is important to lose weight in order to improve a person's health. You need to lose 15-20% of your body weight in order to improve the problems of obese people. Batterham said that if you want to improve someone's heart failure or reduce their risk of dying from cardiovascular disease, then you need to lose a lot of weight.

The professor of nutrition and dietetics at King's College London said that higher levels of the drug caused more side effects, including nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea.

He said that the class of drugs only works if the participants stick to a reduced calories diet.

The senior lecturer at the university said there were challenges.

He said that the drugs will only work if the drug is being taken. After taking the drug for two years, it won't be offered again. It is likely that this will result in a reversal of the weight loss effects for a lot of people.

The professor at the University of Glasgow who was not involved in the work said the findings were good.

Like semaglutide, tirezpatide will be expensive for a long time and its use will be limited.

He said that the emergence of these new drugs does not mean that people should abandon lifestyles as it is better to prevent Obesity in the first place than treat it at a late stage.

Methods to help people improve their diet are changing. Improving the food environment would have the greatest impact on the government.