Eli Lilly Experimental Weight Loss Drug: Some Participants Shed Too Much Weight

Having that issue isn't exactly a bad spot to be in, haha. Still, joking aside, it makes sense that someone would feel uneasy if a new medication they're testing turns out to work more strongly than expected—particularly if muscle tissue is being lost along the way.
 
Apparently there’s no way to come out ahead… dropping too many pounds - that’s a problem, dropping too few - also a problem 🤷‍♂️
 
Outside of a study, a person can simply quit the drug once they reach their goal, naturally. What I want to find out is whether any adverse effects occurred, and why there wouldn't be some method to retain those people in the study without doing them harm?

Losing weight quickly has gotten a poor reputation, yet research from the past decade (coming out of the UK and Australia) demonstrated that fast weight loss led to better results for overall weight reduction and diabetes, and that it largely held up through the three year followup. The premise is that the individual keeps up sufficient nutritional intake during that time.
 
My hunch is that the actual situation was: "Certain Individuals Believed They Had Shed an Excessive Amount of Weight on Eli Lilly's Investigational Obesity Medication"
 
At 12mg over 68 weeks, 28% honestly doesn't strike me as all that dramatic. Plenty of folks I know are definitely dropping more than that. Take me: 27% gone in just 20 weeks, and I wasn't even especially heavy to start. That's 60lb down, and I never went past 5mg.
 
bogardbilla said:

My hunch is that the actual situation was: "Certain Individuals Believed They Had Shed an Excessive Amount of Weight on Eli Lilly's Investigational Obesity Medication"
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Honestly, that whole thing blows my mind. Over on reddit I run into it constantly — someone posts in a total panic like "guys I lost too much weight" while they're clearly still carrying a lot of extra pounds, yet they're acting absolutely terrified. And maybe they genuinely are terrified rather than just putting on a show for the internet. My gut reaction is always "dude, what exactly has you so freaked out?" but I keep it to myself, because wow, that whole situation sounds like an emotional minefield.
 
sfkid said:

https://share.google/0W874cU62RdlYNJJ3

It's notable that a number of trial participants withdrew due to excessive weight loss.
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“A single prescription from an online retailer cannot be the answer to the obesity epidemic,” said McCoy. “It takes a patient and a clinician working in partnership, picking the tool that fits that particular person at that particular moment.”

Reading that, I genuinely choked! What I lived through was the EXACT reverse. 25.2% gone across 49 weeks using the online retailer, then 4.9% across 30 weeks with a clinician (this most recent round).
 
"Oh no, my lobster is overly buttery and my steak is overly juicy!"
 
ambot88 said:

At 12mg over 68 weeks, 28% honestly doesn't strike me as all that dramatic. Plenty of folks I know are definitely dropping more than that. Take me: 27% gone in just 20 weeks, and I wasn't even especially heavy to start. That's 60lb down, and I never went past 5mg.
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That figure is just the mean. In reality, the majority of individuals will not land anywhere near it; there will be plenty who dropped 40% as well as plenty who dropped only 15%.
 
Here's the crazy part — when it comes to dropping pounds, even Semaglutide gets the job done for the majority of folks. Look at the gap from nothing to Sema, then Sema to Tirz, and Tirz to Reta: at this point the added benefit is tiny next to what you get from no drug at all.

We keep pushing for these small step-ups, even when they aren't always needed.

And poor Novo Nordisk — their meds work, just not quite as well, and their stock has been beaten down hard (good time to buy IMHO!)
 
I get why participants would feel that way… but isn’t the study supposed to determine a healthy weight range at which they’d halt treatment? I suppose the point is to check whether the medication works as intended under the design they set up, yet shouldn’t dosing end once a participant reaches an ideal weight range set by their doctor? I haven’t looked into the study much, but I’d think that’s the way it ought to be handled?
 
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