People switching to Novo's Wegovy pill from obesity injections kept losing weight in real-world study

Researchers have released late-stage clinical trial data for the newest obesity drug, retatrutide, which is predicted to be the most potent of its kind. The findings align with high expectations set by the scientific community. When taking the highest dose of retatrutide, patients with obesity experienced an average 25% reduction in body weight after 80 weeks, and an average 30% reduction after an additional 104 weeks.

Over a third of those who took retatrutide shed 30% or more of their body weight. The medication also demonstrated efficacy in alleviating knee pain (by up to 62%) in a group of participants with obesity-linked knee osteoarthritis. Additionally, retatrutide reduced the frequency of sleep apnea events per hour (by up to 57%) in a subset of participants with obesity-linked obstructive sleep apnea.

The drug exhibited improvements in various cardiometabolic metrics, such as blood pressure, triglycerides, and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (often referred to as "bad" cholesterol). Initially, more than a third of trial participants had prediabetes, but by the end of the study, more than 90% of these individuals had the condition under control.

The trial commenced in 2023 and encompassed 2,339 participants from 131 clinical trial sites across 11 countries. Participants were randomly assigned to one of four nearly equal groups, receiving either 4 mg, 9 mg, 12 mg of retatrutide, or a placebo. Across all groups, participants had an average starting weight of approximately 113 kg (250 pounds) and an average body mass index (BMI) of 40.

For the purpose of subset analyses, 574 participants had knee osteoarthritis, and 243 had obstructive sleep apnea. The results were published today in the New England Journal of Medicine.