Diabetes drug helps people with obesity to lose weight significantly: Study

According to experts, a diabetic medicine appears to help obese patients lose weight dramatically. With a weekly dose of the medicine, the impact can be visible. The medicine has been hailed as a game-changer by specialists. Participants shed roughly 20% of their body weight throughout the course of a 72-week experiment. The New England Journal of Medicine has published the study. The multinational team of researchers claimed they divided 2,539 overweight or obese people into four groups in the study. For 72 weeks, one group received a placebo injection, while the other three received either 5mg, 10mg, or 15mg of tirzepatide, a novel medicine.

Every participant was required to eat low-calorie meals and exercise for at least 150 minutes each week. The individuals weighed an average of 104.8kg and 94.5 percent were obese. The bulk of the attendees were female and Caucasian. There was no one with diabetes.

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After the end of the 72-week period, participants who were given 5mg of tirzepatide every week lost an average of 16.1kg, people given 10mg shed an average weight of 22.2kg and the group who had taken the 15mg lost an average weight of 23.6kg. The group which was given a placebo injection lost an average weight of 2.4kg.

Around 57 per cent of people given the highest dose shed 20% or more of body weight in comparison to 3% of people who were given the placebo. “We should treat obesity as we treat any chronic disease – with effective and safe approaches which target underlying disease mechanisms – and these results underscore that tirzepatide may be doing just that,” said Dr Ania Jastreboff of Yale University, who was the lead author of the research.

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