Eli Lilly’s Experimental Weight-Loss Drug Shows Promising Results

Two new studies published in separate journals show that an experimental drug developed by Eli Lilly leads to meaningful weight loss.One study, published in the Lancet and presented at the European Association for the Study of Diabetes, tested the drug retatrutide in people who were overweight or obese and had Type 2 diabetes: a population in which weight-loss medications have historically been less effective. People who took the highest dose lost about 18.8% of their starting body weight, while people who took a placebo lost 5.1%. About a third of the people in the study who took the highest dose of retatrutide lost at least 25% of their body weight, compared to 3% of those on placebo over the study period of 1.5 years.“This is the most potent drug, showing the greatest percent weight loss in people with Type 2 diabetes with a pharmacological agent, shown to date,” says Dr. Juan Pablo Frias, medical director at the Los Angeles Institute for Metabolic Research and one of the Lancet study authors.People in the study also showed improvement in their diabetes control. Of those who took the highest dose, 63% lowered their A1C to less than 6.5%—the threshold for diabetes—and lost at lea...