What to Know About New ‘Triple-G’ Drug Helping Patients Lose a Quarter of Their Body Weight

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The latest experimental GLP-1 from Eli Lilly isn’t just a diabetes drug — it also helps with weight loss.

Known as “triple-G,” injectable retatretide has triple hits on the GLP-1, GIP, and glucagon hormones, while most other drugs on the market only mimic one or two of these hormones.

Lilly’s other broken drugs treat diabetes and obesity separately: Monjaro for the former, and Zipbound for the latter.

Clinical trials show that retatretide reduced blood sugar HbA1C, a key metric in diabetes treatment, by 1.9%—about the same effectiveness as Monjaro. Unlike Monjaro, however, it resulted in an average of 15% total weight loss in the first 40 weeks.

Regarding the latest findings, Dr. Kenneth Caster, Lilly’s executive vice president and director of cardiometabolic health, said that for many patients with type 2 diabetes, “it’s a struggle to control A1C and lose weight, because obesity has historically been difficult to treat for T2D patients.”

“With the triple agonist retatrotide, we have created a molecule that can help patients significantly lower their A1C and lose weight,” he continued. “These results support the significant potential of this novel molecule for people living with T2D, with a 2% A1C improvement and approximately 17% weight loss over 40 weeks of treatment.”

In fact, this is potentially good news for the 60% of overweight adults with type 2 diabetes because diabetics typically experience more weight loss than non-diabetics when undergoing the same weight loss treatment.

Not all participants in the trial were obese, and health experts warn that in some populations, drugs like retatrutide may cause it. a lot Losing weight – Some of these experts claim that the pharmaceutical industry with high weight loss potential to develop drugs may be chasing stock market value at the expense of patient health.

STAT reported last year that some trial participants stopped retatretide or significantly reduced their dose due to concerns that they were losing too much weight.

Some patients reported losing 20-30% of their body weight while taking the drug, and at least one of these patients developed kidney stones during this time, although the cause was unclear.

Retatrutide is expected to receive FDA approval next year.

The Post has previously reported on potential health complications associated with rapid weight loss with GLP-1 drugs, from malnutrition to “eye twitching,” muscle loss and eating disorders.

Dr. John Battis, an associate professor at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, told STAT that he’s not only concerned about the next class of weight-loss drugs, but that the available options may be too strong for some patients.

An example: An elderly patient of his, who was taking a medicine, lost so much weight that she became weak. She fell again and broke her leg.

Some severely obese patients can benefit from a 20% or more weight loss, including those who may qualify for bariatric surgery. But for everyone, including, as STAT points out, “the vast majority of people eligible for drugs,” losing that much weight can be very damaging to their health.

“The magnitude of the weight loss is unknown, and we really need additional data and studies to look at that,” Betts told STAT. “We have to be careful about how much pressure. Just because we can, doesn’t mean we have to.”