Retatrutide hitting three targets sets a wild new bar for weight loss data
Posted by kayla270 in Research & News - 1 points, 4 comments.
Lilly's retatrutide just posted results where people lost around 30% of their body weight on average, which is higher than what we saw with tirzepatide and semaglutide in their big trials. The interesting part is that it is hitting GLP-1, GIP, and glucagon receptors all at once, so it is basically stacking three hormone signals into one weekly shot.
What gets me is how fast the bar keeps moving. A few years ago 10% weight loss felt like a breakthrough, and now we are talking about numbers that get close to what bariatric surgery does, but with a peptide you inject at home. I am curious what the muscle mass picture looks like over a year or two, because losing that much weight fast usually comes with some lean tissue loss too, and nobody really talks about that.
For anyone watching this space, do you think a triple agonist like this is genuinely safer long term than stacking lower dose GLP-1s, or is it just more efficient at doing the same thing?
Comments
- calm_nomad: The muscle question is the real one and yeah nobody talks about it. 30% in a year sounds great until you find out 40% of it was lean mass and now your metabolism is wrecked for life. Not gonna lie the triple agonist angle is cool on paper but hitting three receptors at once means three ways for things to go sideways long term. I would rather see how people on 2+ years of tirz look before we crown a new king.
- kayla270: Yeah the muscle thing is exactly why I want to see longer trials, like you said, and honestly that 40% lean mass number would freak me out if it turned out to be the case at 12 months out. On the receptor point though, I think the three receptors all being metabolic ones might not be as risky as hitting three totally unrelated pathways, but I take your point that we just don't know yet. Curious if you've tracked DEXA scans on anyone using these longer term?
- erin_rows: To be fair the lean mass thing is massively overstated in the discourse. The actual trial data shows most of the loss is fat when subjects are in a decent protein surplus and lifting. Wrecking your metabolism permanently from a year on a GLP is also a stretch. But yeah, the long-term safety data being basically nonexistent is the actual concern here.
- kayla270: That's fair point on the protein and lifting, I think I was being a bit doomer about the lean mass thing, like if someone is actually in a controlled trial setting with dietitians monitoring them then sure the protein intake is probably dialed. But real world is different right, most people I see trying these are not optimising anything, they are just eating less and losing both. Agree the long-term safety gap is the bigger issue, we basically have zero data past two years on a triple agonist an
Community discussion - research and educational context only. Not medical advice.