New weight loss drug proves twice as powerful as Ozempics highest dosage

The numbers on the scale may be shrinking, but the buzz around Eli Lilly’s experimental obesity and diabetes drug is only getting bigger.Newly released data shows the yet-to-be-approved shot helped patients shed more than twice as much weight as Ozempic’s highest approved dose in a head-to-head clinical trial.The next-generation treatment also outperformed its rival at lowering blood sugar, boosting its blockbuster potential in the increasingly crowded obesity and diabetes market.“Head-to-head trials show patients and physicians how a potential new medicine compares with treatments that are available and reimbursed today,” Dr.

Kenneth Custer, Lilly’s executive vice president, said in a press release.“Based on these results and those from across our Phase 3 program, we believe retatrutide, if approved, could shift the treatment paradigm for people living with type 2 diabetes, obesity and related cardiometabolic conditions.”The experimental shot, called retatrutide, is the latest heavy hitter in Lilly’s drug pipeline.If approved, it would join the company’s popular treatments Mounjaro and Zepbound.Both of those drugs work by mimicking two gut hormones — GLP-1 and GIP — that help regulate blood sugar, curb appetite and slow digestion.Retatrutide takes the science a step further.

Nicknamed “Triple G,” it targets those same two pathways while also activating glucagon, a third hormone involved in fat burning.The latest trial pitted two weekly doses of retatrutide — 9 milligrams and 12 milligrams — against a 2-milligram dose of Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic, the drug’s highest approved dose for type 2 diabetes.Nearly 1,300 adults with type 2 diabetes participated in the study.

At the outset, their average A1C — a measure of blood sugar levels over roughly the previous three months — was 8.3%.After 80 weeks, participants taking either dose of retatrutide saw their A1C fall by an average of 2.2 percentage points, compared with a 1.8-point dr...