A new study has found that one of the top names in the groundbreaking new class of weight loss drugs may not only be good at treating diabetes, but could actually help prevent the disease.
In a new study published in the New England Medical Journal, researchers found that tirzepatide, the active ingredient in Eli Lilly's Mounjaro diabetes treatment and Zepbound weight loss injectable, cut the risk of developing diabetes by a whopping 94 percent in people who are at high risk of the disease.
Funded by Lilly as part of a Phase 3 trial into the efficacy of its flagship glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonist — which, like Novo Nordisk's chemically similar semaglutide, the active ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy, mimics the body's feeling of fullness — this more than three-year-long study involved over 2500 subjects who were overweight and considered pre-diabetic.
In a randomized and double-blind experiment, the researchers from an international consortium of medical schools had patients take weekly injections of either a placebo shot or one with either 5, 10, or 15 milligrams of tirzepatide.
As they found at the end of the 176-week trial, those who took the tirzepatide not only lost a significant amount of weight, but also seemed to be far less likely to develop diabetes. Of the overall group taking the tirzepatide, only 1.3 percent received a diabetes diagnosis by the end of the lengthy trial, whereas 13.3 percent of the placebo group developed it.
While some studies have suggested that people who lose weight on GLP-1 drugs are likely to gain it back after they stop taking it (though the data is somewhat mixed on that point) this trial found that the apparent protective benefits for developing diabetes seemed to last. After 17 weeks, only 2.4 percent of those who took active tirzepatide were diagnosed with diabetes — which as the New York Times notes, suggests that the drug helped the pre-diabetic and overweight trial participants keep their blood sugar under control.
That same NYT writeup points out that other studies conducted with Novo's Ozempic and Wegovy suggest that the active ingredient in those drugs, semaglutide, may offer similar protective benefits.
Should these results bear out in future trials, it may be yet another health benefit provided by these drugs — though their sky-high prices and spotty insurance coverage means that most people still can't afford them.
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