Mounjaro maintains weight loss for over 70 weeks – 6/1/2023 – Equilibrium

“What’s in it? I haven’t thought about food in seven weeks,” writes an American woman on TikTok in a video post showing an injectable pen. She is referring to Mounjaro, the trade name for tirzepatida, a drug for the treatment of diabetes used for weight loss in the United States and Europe.

The drug approval process in Brazil is under review by Anvisa (National Health Surveillance Agency), which did not provide information on when the drug might hit the shelves in the country.

Part of the treatment’s success is due to the promise of being even more effective than semaglutide (Ozempic and Wegovy) for weight loss. A study at the last European Congress on Obesity, in Dublin (Ireland), explains one of the reasons: obese users take longer to reach the “plateau” of the weight loss process, when they stop losing weight.

According to the work, more than 80% of the participants showed significant weight loss during 72 weeks of using tirzepatida, a time considered unprecedented when compared to other existing treatments.

The drug exists in doses of 5mg, 10mg and 15mg. Although higher dosages caused more weight loss, the time to plateau was similar for all.

An individual is considered to have reached a plateau when he or she loses less than 5% of body weight over a 12-week period. This stabilization occurs with any treatment for obesity.

“As the individual loses weight, there is activation of some defense pathways for this loss and, with that, weight stabilization”, says endocrinologist Gláucia Carneiro, responsible for the obesity clinic at Unifesp (Federal University of São Paulo).

The study included participants with a BMI (body mass index) greater than 30 or from 27 with at least one comorbidity. The results contribute to the search for approval of the drug for the treatment of obesity. There is no indication for people who do not fit these criteria.

Carneiro also considers that the study is relevant to confirm the safety of the drug, since weight stabilization is important to reduce the risk of excessive weight loss, for example.

Tirzepatide is considered a dual-agonist, as it simulates the effects of two intestinal hormones that act on the feeling of satiety and metabolism. Semaglutide (Ozempic and Wegovy), for example, has an effect on only one of these hormones.

There are no robust studies comparing the effects of the two substances, but the effectiveness of tirzepatide in weight loss is considered unprecedented.

According to Carneiro, effects similar to those of Mounjaro are seen only with bariatric surgery. For the 15mg dose, the reduction recorded was, on average, 22% of body weight, and only 2% of participants did not respond to the drug. “For semaglutide, the average is a 15% reduction in weight”, says the expert.