One of Dr. Jastreboff’s study participants, a 49-year-old mother of three with a full-time job (who did not want her name used), has been participating in a clinical trial at Yale that involves weekly injections to test a drug similar to semaglutide, called tirzepatide, that combines GLP-1 and another hormone called glucose-dependent insulinotropic peptide (GIP). Dr. Jastreboff is the site principal investigator.
The participant had tried numerous diets and exercise plans to lose extra weight she’d carried for decades, but nothing worked. Even though she worked hard at maintaining a healthy lifestyle, she gained 25 pounds working at home during the pandemic. “But the rest of it, I’ve carried all my life,” she says.
Since it was a double-blind trial, in which some participants were given a placebo, at first she didn’t know if she was taking the drug, but says over a period of about a year, “the weight melted off of me.” Near the end of the trial, she had lost 85 pounds, so she believes she was taking the drug.
“It worked for me because my issue is mindlessly overeating. Because the drug often makes me feel incredibly full after just a few bites, it has been a real change to my eating habits,” the participant says. She used to consume 3,000 calories a day “easily,” and in the trial, she has been unable to take in more than 1,500. “One serving of Oreos is three cookies, and it was always a struggle to stop at three,” she says. “In the trial, I found it a real struggle to eat more than three.”
READ RELATED: This is Kendall Jenner's Exact Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner
“These drugs [like semaglutide and tirzepatide] have the potential to help many more people,” says Artur Viana, MD, a Yale Medicine gastroenterologist and clinical director of the Metabolic Health & Weight Loss Program, where he has prescribed semaglutide. He notes that the performance of the drug—15% to 20% weight loss—is impressive because it signifies a trend in which anti-obesity medications are starting to approach the 25% to 30% weight loss mark that so far has only been achieved with bariatric surgery.
Medication treatment for obesity is less invasive and works more gradually than surgery. Patients typically start with a low dose of .25 milligrams and work up to the target dose of 2.4 milligrams over a period of about 5 months. “The weight loss is gradual, but tends to slow down with time, leading to a new plateau,” Dr. Viana says.
It can take more than a year for the drug to reach full effectiveness, although some patients hit their plateau earlier than that. For any anti-obesity medication, doctors want to see a benchmark of 5% total body weight loss in the first three months, which is a good predictor of whether the medication will continue to work, Dr. Viana explains.
Source:
