Daily Dose: Tirzepatide Preferred GLP-1 Agonist for Inducing Weight Loss

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Patient Care brings primary care clinicians a lot of medical news every day—it’s easy to miss an important study. The Daily Dose provides a concise summary of one of the website's leading stories you may not have seen.

Last week, we reported on findings presented at the American College of Gastroenterology (ACG) 2023 Annual Scientific Meeting in Vancouver, BC.

The study

Researchers conducted a systemic review of data from the MEDLINE and Embase databases to assess weight loss effects of GLP-1 agonists tirzepatide, semaglutide, liraglutide and dulaglutide compared with placebo. They analyzed 17 randomized controlled trials, which included nearly 22 000 adults (BMI ≥27) with obesity-related comorbidities.

Participants for the analysis had received the treatment for 40 weeks or more and changes in body weight must have been measured as a primary or secondary end point.

Findings

Across the analysis, tirzepatide at any dose was the most effect for reducing body weight compared with placebo. The 15 mg dose, which was found to have the highest level of weight change, induced a -20.10% change in body weight.

The second most effective agent for weight management was semaglutide 2.4 mg, which induced a mean change in body weight of -13.61%. Although some weight change was observed, the least effective GLP-1 examined was liraglutide.

Authors' comment

"Current guidelines do recommend these agents in BMI greater than 30 but very few patients are on a GLP-1 agonist, and that needs to increase. We need to prescribe them more."

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