Already wildly popular in type 2 diabetes and obesity, Eli Lilly’s tirzepatide can help prevent one of the very diseases it’s meant to treat, new data show.
In adults with pre-diabetes and obesity or overweight, weekly injections of tirzepatide across a range of doses (5 mg, 10 mg and 15 mg) slashed the risk of progression to type 2 diabetes by 94% versus placebo, according to Lilly’s three-year SURMOUNT-1 study. Lilly's drug is marketed in the U.S. as Mounjaro in diabetes and as Zepbound in obesity.
In the SURMOUNT-1 trial, the drug further cemented its impressive weight-loss profile: Adults taking the 15 mg dose of the dual GIP/GLP-1 agonist lost an average of 22.9% of their body weight, versus a slim 2.1% weight reduction for those in the trial’s control arm, Lilly said in a release.
On average, patients on tirzepatide’s 5 mg and 10 mg doses lost 15.4% and 19.9% of their body weight, respectively.
The results support the potential benefits of long-term treatment with tirzepatide for people living with obesity and pre-diabetes, Jeff Emmick, M.D., Ph.D., Lilly’s SVP of product development, said in a statement.
The study tested the medicine in 1,032 adults who had pre-diabetes at the time of randomization and obesity or overweight for a span of 176 weeks, followed by a 17-week off-treatment period for a total trial run of 193 weeks.
Lilly previously published results from SURMOUNT-1’s primary analysis in the New England Journal of Medicine at the trial’s 72-week mark. It plans to submit the new data to a medical journal and present them at ObesityWeek 2024, which is slated to take place in early November.
Further building on the case for continued tirzepatide treatment, Lilly noted that during the trial’s 17-week off period, patients who stopped taking the drug started to regain weight and “had some increase in the progression to type 2 diabetes.”
Safety was on par with tirzepatide’s established profile, with patients most commonly experiencing side effects such as diarrhea, nausea, constipation and vomiting, Lilly said.
Tirzepatide’s pre-diabetes data follow a string of wins for the drug, which has already made a case for itself in conditions like diabetes, obesity, heart failure, sleep apnea and fatty liver disease.
Earlier this month, tirzepatide triumphed in Lilly’s phase 3 SUMMIT trial in patients with heart failure. In the study, the drug was shown to reduce the risk of adverse heart failure outcomes—such as hospitalization or cardiovascular death—by 38% versus placebo. The study looked at 731 patients with heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF) and obesity.
In June, tirzepatide helped 54.9% of metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH) patients on the 5 mg dose, 51.3% of patients on the 10 mg dose and 51% of patients on the 15 mg dose decrease their fibrosis by at least one stage without their MASH worsening.
MASH, formerly known as NASH, also goes by the name fatty liver disease and describes an inflammation on the liver caused by excess fat cells in the organ.
Despite being plagued by periodic supply constraints, Mounjaro and Zepbound have done gangbusters for Lilly, which recently raised its full-year guidance by $3 billion to a range of $45.5 billion to $46.6 billion. The company credited tirzepatide sales specifically for that decision.
In the second quarter, Mounjaro generated $3.09 billion, while Zepbound brought home $1.24 billion.
The meds’ supply constraints appear to have abated for now. Earlier this month, all doses of Mounjaro and Zepbound were listed as available on the FDA’s online database of drug shortages.