Some fascinating numbers for the consequences of weight reduction in overweight people on danger of age-related illness come up from the usage of semaglutide in medical trials. Within the examine famous right here, handled people misplaced 9% of physique weight versus 1% for the placebo arm. The end result of that’s at the least nearly as good as the usage of statins in relation to results on heart problems. The lesson to remove from that is possible that being obese is extra dangerous than most individuals wish to assume that it’s. Current information is actually supportive of that conclusion. Extra visceral fats tissue has been proven to result in a shorter life expectancy, greater lifetime medical prices, higher incidence of all frequent age-related illness, and the extra of it, the more serious the result.

In a multicenter, double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled, event-driven superiority trial, we enrolled sufferers 45 years of age or older who had preexisting heart problems and a body-mass index (the burden in kilograms divided by the sq. of the peak in meters) of 27 or higher however no historical past of diabetes. Sufferers have been randomly assigned in a 1:1 ratio to obtain once-weekly subcutaneous semaglutide at a dose of two.4 mg or placebo. The first cardiovascular finish level was a composite of loss of life from cardiovascular causes, nonfatal myocardial infarction, or nonfatal stroke in a time-to-first-event evaluation. Security was additionally assessed.

A complete of 17,604 sufferers have been enrolled; 8803 have been assigned to obtain semaglutide and 8801 to obtain placebo. The imply length of publicity to semaglutide or placebo was 34.2 ± 13.7 months, and the imply length of follow-up was 39.8 ± 9.4 months. A major cardiovascular end-point occasion occurred in 569 of the 8803 sufferers (6.5%) within the semaglutide group and in 701 of the 8801 sufferers (8.0%) within the placebo group (hazard ratio, 0.80). Antagonistic occasions resulting in everlasting discontinuation of the trial product occurred in 1461 sufferers (16.6%) within the semaglutide group and 718 sufferers (8.2%) within the placebo group.

Hyperlink: https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMoa2307563