A study on the weight loss drug tirzepatide showed that people who took it had significantly lower blood pressure after 36 weeks of using the drug.
Tirzepatide, manufactured by Eli Lilly, is used to treat type 2 diabetes, under the brand name Mounjaro, and to treat obesity, under the brand name Zepbound. It is the latest in a new class of weight-loss drugs, and its main competitor is semaglutide, made by Novo Nordisk and sold as Ozempic for diabetes and Wegovy for weight loss. For both drugs, researchers have been evaluating whether they have additional effects beyond weight loss.
blood pressure study, supported by Eli Lilly and published Monday in the journal Hypertension, was part of a larger effort to evaluate the effects of tirzepatide on weight loss. Researchers had already found that people taking the drug had lower blood pressure when readings were taken at the doctor’s office. The new study applied a more rigorous criterion: Did participants who took the drug have lower blood pressures when measured with a 24-hour monitor?
They did it. Those taking the drug had systolic blood pressure (the pressure on blood vessels when the heart contracts) that was 7.4 to 10.0 milligrams of mercury lower than that of participants taking a placebo. Systolic pressure is believed to be an accurate predictor of heart disease risk.
The blood pressure reduction, said Dr. James de Lemos, a cardiologist at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and lead author of the study, is about what would be expected with a full dose of a blood pressure medication. As such, he said, the drug may be useful for people trying to control their blood pressure and reduce their risk of heart attack and stroke (although the study does not suggest that tirzepatide be substituted for other blood pressure medications).
But he noted that it was not possible to distinguish the effect (if any) the drug had on blood pressure from the known effect that weight loss has on lowering blood pressure.
Dr. Benjamin Ansell, a blood pressure specialist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who was not involved in the study, said he was not surprised by the result.
“One could also hypothesize that weight loss led to more exercise or improved sleep/reduced sleep apnea, either of which could ‘additionally’ lower blood pressure,” he wrote in an email.
A more interesting effect of a drug in this class, Dr. Ansell noted, is the recent discovery that semaglutide helps patients with a condition known as heart failure with preserved ejection fraction, a common result of obesity and high blood pressure. It is a chronic and progressive disease that weakens and destroys the quality of life. Most patients with this type of heart failure are obese, and obesity is thought to contribute to the disease and its progression.
in a big study According to Novo Nordisk, patients taking semaglutide had fewer symptoms of the disease and were able to exercise better, the researchers found.
That result, Dr. Ansell added, “showed profound clinical significance by improving function while reducing hospitalizations.”
And that discovery adds to another Novo Nordisk. result showing that semaglutide reduced the risk of cardiac events such as heart attacks.
