Mounjaro (tirzepatide), a GLP-1 medication, not only promotes weight loss and is an excellent treatment for diabetes, it has now been shown to be an alternative treatment for obstructive sleep apnea.
“Excess adiposity should be confirmed by at least one other anthropometric criterion (eg, waist circumference) or by direct fat measurement when available. However, in people with substantially high BMI levels (ie, >40 kg/m2) excess adiposity can be pragmatically assumed
People with confirmed obesity (that is, with clinically documented excess adiposity) should then be assessed for possible clinical obesity based on findings from medical history, physical examination, and standard laboratory tests…”
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/landia/article/PIIS2213-8587(24)00316-4/abstract
Mounjaro just approved for Sleep Apnea
“IF YOU TAKE a GLP-1 agonist like Ozempic or Zepbound, you can see changes to your waistline and your blood sugar within weeks. What might be less obvious is how the drug is affecting your brain. Research suggests these popular weight-loss medications can influence everything from daily behavior to risk of age-related memory loss, and neuroscientists are working overtime to discover exactly how these drugs affect the brain.
“It is a hot topic,” says Kevin Williams, Ph.D., a neuroscientist at the University of Texas Medical Branch. “If you can understand how these drugs are accessing the brain and where they are acting, then potentially that could guide future drug development to be able to better target these regions.”
https://www.menshealth.com/health/a63249412/what-ozempic-does-to-your-brain/
In the first head-to-head test, Eli Lilly’s Zepbound obesity drug helped people lose significantly more weight than its main competitor, Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy.
People taking Zepbound lost 20.2% of their body weight on average after 72 weeks of treatment in the Lilly-sponsored study, compared with a 13.7% loss for Wegovy patients, Lilly said Wednesday.
That translated into an average 50-pound loss for people who took Zepbound, while Wegovy users lost 33 pounds.
PS: Zepbound and Mounjaro are the same drug with different brand names, as are Ozempic and Wegovy.
This opinion piece by Dr Scott Gottlieb, a Pfizer board member, may be biased towards the pharmaceutical industry 🤔
“FDA’s permissive stance on the compounding of GLP-1 drugs used for weight loss. Initially, the agency cited shortages of semaglutide and tirzepatide — the active ingredients in the popular drugs Wegovy and Zepbound — and allowed pharmacies to compound these drugs under a provision for addressing drug shortages.”
TL:DR 50% reduction in AHI (apnea-hypoxia index) and a lowering of blood pressure (which may reduce risk of stroke and heart attack!)
Obstructive sleep apnea is one of the most common respiratory disorders worldwide. Persons with obstructive sleep apnea can have loud snoring that is detrimental to social relationships and have breathing problems that result in recurrent nocturnal awakenings, unrefreshing sleep, and excessive daytime sleepiness — effects that together can substantially impair quality of life.
The improvement in systolic blood pressure that was seen with tirzepatide was substantially larger than effects seen with CPAP therapy alone7 and indicate that tirzepatide may be an attractive option for those patients who seek to reduce their cardiovascular risk
The initial results from the SURMOUNT-OSA trial show the usefulness of tirzepatide as an adjunctive treatment to address coexisting obesity in patients with obstructive sleep apnea. Weight loss resulting from tirzepatide treatment may be leveraged to expand the populations that may benefit from second-line treatments for obstructive sleep apnea.
(The GLP1 drugs are favorites for Dr Varipapa, improving health in so many ways!)
A large trial showed that semaglutide, sold as Ozempic for diabetes and as Wegovy for obesity, was better than any current medications in alleviating symptoms.
(Dr Varipapa suspects Mounjaro and Zepbound to have similar if not better benefit as it is even better for treatment of obesity!)
The blockbuster drug semaglutide, sold as Ozempic for diabetes and as Wegovy for weight loss, now has a new proven benefit: It markedly soothed knee pain in people who are obese and have moderate to severe osteoarthritis, according to a large study.
The effect was so pronounced that some arthritis experts not involved with the clinical trial were taken aback.
“The magnitude of the improvement is of a scope we haven’t seen before with a drug,” said Dr. Bob Carter, deputy director of the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases. “They had an almost 50 percent reduction in their knee pain. That’s huge.”
There’s growing evidence that GLP-1 drugs, which include Ozempic, Mounjaro (Dr Varipapa’s favorite), Zepbound and Wegovy, may benefit the brain.
Semaglutide, the active ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy, appeared to reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease in people with Type 2 diabetes, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia.
The study adds to evidence that GLP-1 drugs — the class of medications that also includes Mounjaro and Zepbound — may benefit the brain.
Among persons with moderate-to-severe obstructive sleep apnea and obesity, tirzepatide (Mounjaro, Zepbound) reduced the AHI, body weight, hypoxic burden, hsCRP concentration, and systolic blood pressure and improved sleep-related patient-reported outcomes.
“Curbing addiction isn’t the only potential extra benefit of GLP-1 drugs.
Mounjaro Zepbound Ozempic Wegovy
Other studies have suggested they can reduce the risk of death, strokes and heart attacks for people with cardiovascular disease or chronic kidney ailments, ease sleep apnea symptoms and even slow the development of Parkinson’s disease. There are now hundreds of clinical trials testing the drugs for these conditions and others as varied as fatty liver disease, Alzheimer’s disease, cognitive dysfunction and HIV complications.”
CNMRI: Neurology, Sleep Medicine, MRI 