Obesity has always been a problem for people in the United States, and the number of people suffering from it or even dying because of this disease is worrying.
Besides that, that doesn’t include the number of people who don’t have the body mass index to get into the obesity spectrum but still suffer from different health issues due to their weight and want to change it.
Addressing both situations is complex since losing weight is not as simple as many people say it is, and not feeling well about your body could trigger mental health issues such as anxiety or depression. There are many weight loss drugs on the market to help people deal with this problem, but not all of them are as effective as they claim to be.
Wegovy and Saxenda are the most popular weight loss drugs out there, but they don’t offer the substantial and sustained reductions people want. Fortunately for everyone going through this issue, there’s a new weight loss drug showing way better results than any other has even shown.
We are talking about Tirzepatide, and while this drug started as a treatment for diabetes, people now want the FDA to approve it as a treatment for obesity and even for weight loss in general. Do you want to know more about Tirzepatide? This is the page for you!
Dive into this page to learn everything you need to know about the new weight loss drug everyone wants to try! Learning more about it can let you know if it’s a worth-taking option or if it’s just one more of the many who have tried to help people lose weight fast in the past and failed.
What Is Tirzepatide?
Tirzepatide is a novel glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide and glucagon-like peptide -1 receptor agonist similar to other agonists that help with weight loss. When this drug came out, it did as part of a diabetes medical treatment, but due to how much bodyweight diabetes patients lost during that process; now, people want to use it for weight loss.
Regardless of that, Tirzepatide only has FDA approval in small doses to help diabetes patients, so people who want it just to lose body weight can’t use it, yet. This drug was developed by Eli Lilly.
Some people also call Tirzepatide Mounjaro.
How Does Tirzepatide Work?
As mentioned before, this drug is a GIB-1 agonist that mimics the hormone in our body meant to reduce food intake and appetite. While that would already be helpful, this drug has a second effect since it also triggers a second hormone that breaks down sugar and fat. Tirzepatide is a subcutaneous drug and only works if you take a month’s supply of it.
This drug went through phase three clinical trials not so long and showed positive results. Other studies on the drug also took diabetes patients in a 72-week trial where they needed to take between 5mg and 15mg of Tirzepatide once every week.
Is Tirzepatide FDA-Approved?
It depends on what you want the drug for since, after clinical trials, the FDA approved it in small doses for diabetes patients. However, that doesn’t include other people since they haven’t deemed it safe in those tests.
Regardless of that, most experts expect it to come out soon since everyone loves it. The problem with that is they also expect it to be highly expensive, even competing with other expensive medication on the market, so don’t expect to buy it as you would buy any other drug in a pharmacy.
As for when the FDA will approve it for public use, experts think it will be this year or at the beginning of the next one. Some even think people will be able to use it not just as a drug to treat obesity but also for weight reduction in general. If a new optimized version of this drug comes out with the intention to treat the population and its need to look better, the way in which weight management is addressed may change completely.
However, we can only speculate what will happen until that change actually happens.
Can People of Any Body Weight Take Tirzepatide?
We can only tell you what we conclude by studying the information the clinical tests ran on this drug have shown us. People first thought this would only be a diabetes medication since it was only tested in patients with diabetes. Regardless of that, once they started testing it on other patients with other diseases excluding diabetes, they saw it still brings excellent results.
The problem with it is medical professionals have only tested this drug with people suffering from diabetes, obesity, or who have serious overweight issues. Hence, it’s difficult to know how the body of someone who just has some extra pounds would react to what this drug offers.
While it’s still up to experts to determine who can and can’t take this medicine, we don’t expect someone from the FDA or a medical professional to recommend people who are not highly overweight to take this drug.
Has Tirzepatide Helped Diabetes Patients?
According to what clinical trials have shown about Tirzepatide, the drug is highly effective against type two diabetes, as it can quickly lower glycated hemoglobin and body weight, which are two of the main issues people suffering from diabetes struggle with.
Although it’s not a cure for diabetes or something similar, Mounjaro sure is something that will make diabetic patients’ lives easier. Regardless of that, we are yet to know how effective this medical treatment is for the other two types of diabetes and other diseases related to it.
One of the main signs that this drug is excellent for diabetic patients is that it’s already FDA-approved for use by type two diabetes victims.
Can a Tirzepatide Injection Help Patients with Obesity Regardless of Their Body Mass Index?
Something everyone willing to take this drug should be aware of before doing it is that it can affect various bodies differently, and you still don’t know how it will affect yours, which is one of the reasons why it doesn’t have FDA approval yet.
Most participants of the past trials of this drug had a BMI of 30 or even higher than that, so you don’t have to worry about that if that’s your case.
As for patients with a lower BMI, it’s still unsure how their bodies will react to this drug, but there’s not a clinical trial that suggests it may be a negative effect, so there’s not any reason to believe it won’t be available for people regardless of their body mass index.
If this drug becomes available to everyone, it could reduce substantial global morbidity before people start suffering from it. Apart from that, the most common adverse events linked to a weight-related complication also could happen less if this drug succeeds. Unfortunately, due to the price of this possible weight reduction treatment may have when it comes out, not many people will be able to take it because of its price.
Has There Been a Tirzepatide Weight Loss Trial?
Tirzepatide already went through a phase three trial, and the results of all the tests made to see how effective this drug is are promising. The first Tirzepatide clinical trials were undergone with the help of diabetic patients, but since they brought positive results, experts started to run tests on obese and overweight patients.
Patients treated with Tirzepatide lost from 15% to 20% of their body weight, which is better than other weight loss drugs available on the market. Saxenda, for example, can only help you lose up to five percent of your body weight.
This change happened over 72 weeks, and tests with patients taking a placebo group only made patients see a three percent change. What does this tell us? It tells us that what this drug achieves is real and it’s not the result of a huge placebo effect.
Patients taking part in the trial had an injection every week, so we don’t recommend anyone take a different measure of this drug since people don’t know what could happen if they took more than what medical professionals have tested.
Regardless of that, it’s best if anyone taking this drug does it with the help of someone who has been studying it or keeping track of what each of the trials shows.
What Should We Expect from the Tirzepatide Price?
Although most people may not want this, it’s a safe guess to say Tirzepatide will be among the most expensive drugs on the market by the time it comes out. You won’t be able to buy this drug with the money you would buy a regular pill due to all the results it has shown in every clinical trial.
Experts expect Eli Lilly to earn billions of dollars once this drug for weight management gets to the market, and they won’t get there by only charging a few dollars for each injection. As it happens with other drugs, you would need to pay for this medicine’s month’s supply, so the price you’ll see on this page is measured that way.
Most people agree you will need to pay something between $1,500 and $1,350 for Tirzepatide’s month’s supply. This price is similar to Wegovy and Saxenda without being more expensive than them. However, the results this drug has on weight management may make its price go even higher.
You would need to pay about $13,000 annually if you wanted to take a weekly injection all year. Is this a problem? Well, if you see Tirzepatide as a weight loss drug, it’s fair since it allows you to lose a lot of weight without going through other surgical treatments.
However, if you want to take Mounjaro to treat your diabetes, it won’t be easy at all to pay for this medical treatment since you will still need to pay for other medications. Will Eli Lilly reduce its price to help patients worldwide? We wouldn’t expect that and think you shouldn’t either.
Could People Take the Tirzepatide Weight Loss Drug at the Comprehensive Weight Control Center or Any Other Health Center in the Future?
Once Tirzepatide is released to the public, you should expect medical professionals from any kind of medical center, such as the Wharton Weight Management Clinic, to support its use. The thing is they may take some time to adapt to everything this drug will change about the current medical treatment of obesity and diabetes.
If Tirzepatide shows up to be a successful medicine for the treatment of obesity, it will be a revolutionary one, and it will take time for medical centers, even if they are weight control-focused, to adapt to that change. Apart from that, the price this drug ends up having also affects the time and medical centers that support it.
When Will Tirzepatide Be Available to the Public?
It’s difficult to know when people will be able to enjoy the benefits of taking Tirzepatide since we all still need to wait for the FDA to approve it. Regardless of that, most experts agree that it will be in 2023, so you won’t have to wait that long for it.
Since there was already a successful phase three trial for Tirzepatide, it’s not outrageous to think developers will release this drug between September and December, but that’s just a guess. This will only happen if there’s not any extraordinary global situation that affects or delays this drug’s release.
Does Insurance Pay for Tirzepatide?
The short answer is no; you shouldn’t expect insurance companies to pay for Tirzepatide. While insurance can cover some drugs, it won’t cover drugs you don’t need to live or to heal from something dangerous immediately. If your healthcare provider tells you it won’t cover weight loss drugs, forget about it paying for Mounjaro.
Some people try to go over the rules and ask for off-label prescriptions of similar drugs. However, it doesn’t seem like something insurance would cover. Apart from that, if Tirzepatide is as expensive as experts think it will be, insurance companies won’t be interested in paying for it.
Does Tirzepatide Have Any Side Effects?
All drugs or medical treatments have some side effects, so it’s up to all patients to see if the drug they want to take doesn’t have a side effect bad enough to keep them from taking it. Tirzepatide is not an exception to that.
One of the most common side effects this drug has had in clinical trials is a serious allergic reaction. Some symptoms include face, lip, tongue, or throat swelling, as well as breathing problems, itching, dizziness, or a fast-paced heartbeat.
Make sure to get immediate medical attention if you start suffering from these symptoms after taking Tirzepatide. You should do the same if you get pancreatitis. How can you know if you have pancreatitis? Severe abdominal pain with vomiting often tells it away.
Mounjaro triggered hypoglycemia in some patients during some of the trials, but we recommend you stop taking this drug if you start experiencing this.
Some of these side effects symptoms are drowsiness, sweating, blurred vision, anxiety, or hunger. Nonetheless, check yourself with a medical professional if this happens since the problem won’t be that bad if your blood sugar levels are not that low.
However, there’s still to be a clinical trial to show the range in which low blood sugar can be dangerous for you after taking Tirzepatide. If you often suffer from kidney problems, you should know taking Mounjaro injections will cause other symptoms of it, such as diarrhea, vomiting, nausea, and dehydration. Your kidney problems may worsen if these symptoms strike the patient too hard.
Many people in trials for weight reduction with this new drug also reported severe stomach aches and changes in their vision. You can also expect not-that-severe gallbladder problems after taking Tirzepatide.
Who Should Avoid Tirzepatide?
As you could see, Tirzepatide has shown excellent results for all kinds of patients, but not all of them will be able to afford it, and even if they do, this weight loss drug may not be what they are looking for. Similar to any other drug on the market, Mounjaro has some side effects you need to be aware of before thinking about trying it.
These are some of the people who can’t use Tirzepatide to either lose body weight or treat diabetes or obesity:
- People with thyroid cancer or with a family member who had thyroid cancer or medullary thyroid carcinoma (MTC)
- People with Multiple Endocrine Neoplasia syndrome type 2 (MEN 2)
- People allergic to any of the ingredients used for this drug
Anyone who shows a serious allergic reaction after taking this new drug should also avoid it, even if they had average weight reductions after using it. If they ignore this and still take it, they could suffer from a much more dangerous allergic reaction and even face fatal consequences.
The same happens with medullary thyroid carcinoma and thyroid cancer patients since taking this drug could worsen their situation a bit, so it’s better if they don’t.
Bottom Line – What Should We Expect from Tirzepatide?
As you could see, Tirzepatide is one of the most promising drugs that have been on the market for years due to how much it can help people lose weight in a short period. The way Tirzepatide helps people with diabetes is also excellent, although it’s not the main reason this drug became that popular.
Obesity is not something to take lightly, and dealing with this chronic disease without having to undergo any surgical treatments is something priceless for patients, so we can only wait to see if the FDA ends up approving this drug or allows people to take a higher dose.
As promising as it may be, you should also be aware of this drug’s side effects since some of them could bring a lot of trouble to your life. Although not everyone in the controlled trial used to test this drug suffered from those side effects, the fact that at least one of them did is enough since you could be the person that suffers from it.
It wouldn’t be a surprise to see this drug’s developer releasing a new version to reduce those side effects, so don’t expect the current version of this treatment to be the last of it. Even if it has already shown results, it’s still in the development stage, so the benefits of the drug’s final version may be even better than the ones we have now.
We also recommend asking your healthcare provider if you would be compatible with what new drugs offer you before trying them since they know how your body works better than you.