{"id":41130,"date":"2025-04-17T02:57:00","date_gmt":"2025-04-17T07:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=41130"},"modified":"2025-04-17T08:10:16","modified_gmt":"2025-04-17T13:10:16","slug":"lilly-says-daily-pill-can-lower-blood-sugar-and-weight-in-people-with-type-2-diabetes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=41130","title":{"rendered":"Lilly says daily pill can lower blood sugar and weight in people with Type 2 diabetes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A daily pill from Eli Lilly lowered blood sugar levels<\/a> and induced weight loss in people with Type 2 diabetes, the company announced Thursday.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The experimental pill, called orforglipron, is a GLP-1 drug \u2014 the same class of medicine as the blockbuster diabetes and weight loss drugs<\/a> Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Orforglipron is taken orally, however, not as a weekly injection.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEverybody knows GLP-1s now, and they\u2019re sort of famous as injectable peptide drugs, but we\u2019ve engineered this now into a new kind of molecule that can be taken as a pill form,\u201d Dr. Dan Skovronsky, Lilly\u2019s chief scientific officer, said in an interview. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If it is approved, Lilly\u2019s drug would be the second oral GLP-1 drug available in the United States. The first, Rybelsus, made by Novo Nordisk, contains semaglutide, the active ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy. Rybelsus is approved for Type 2 diabetes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lilly said in a news release that in a phase 3 clinical trial, orforglipron lowered A1C levels by 1.6% after 40 weeks compared with a placebo. The full results of the trial were not available to review. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A1C is a measure of a person\u2019s average blood sugar levels over the previous two to three months, according to the American Diabetes Association<\/a>. An A1C below 5.7% is considered normal; a result of 6.5% or above is in the range for diabetes. Results that fall between those values are in the prediabetes range.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

More than 65% of the participants taking orforglipron had A1C readings equal to or less than 6.5% after 40 weeks.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Participants who received the highest dose of the drug lost up to 16 pounds, or 7.9% of their body weight, over the study period.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lilly said the results of the clinical trial will be published in a peer-reviewed journal and presented at the American Diabetes Association conference in June.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Christopher McGowan, a\u202fgastroenterologist who runs a weight loss clinic in Cary, North Carolina, called Lilly\u2019s results \u201cvery encouraging.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The reduction in A1C \u201cis comparable to what we see with injectable GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic, though perhaps slightly less than what\u2019s seen with dual agonists like Mounjaro,\u201d said McGowan, who was not involved in the trial. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A pill, McGowan added, has several advantages over an injectable drug. For the drugmaker, it is easier to manufacture and distribute. For some patients, it may be less intimidating.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSome patients are hesitant to start an injectable therapy, no matter how effective it is,\u201d he said. \u201cHaving a pill as an option could reduce that barrier.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lilly is also researching how well orforglipron works for weight loss alone<\/a> in people without Type 2 diabetes. In phase 2 clinical trial \u2014 the findings of which were published in 2023 in the New England Journal of Medicine<\/a> \u2014 daily orforglipron was found to reduce body weight by an average of 9.4% to 14.7% after 36 weeks, depending on the dose. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Susan Spratt, an endocrinologist and senior medical director at Duke Health who was not involved in the trial, questioned whether orforglipron had any drug-drug interactions \u2014 as is the case, she said, with Rybelsus, which can interact with certain thyroid medications. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lilly said Thursday that phase 3 results from the weight loss trial will be available later this year. It plans to submit the drug to the Food and Drug Administration as a weight loss treatment by the end of 2025. In 2026, it plans to apply for approval as a diabetes treatment.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

nbcnews<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A daily pill from Eli Lilly lowered blood sugar levels and induced weight loss in people with Type 2 diabetes, the company announced Thursday.   The experimental pill, called orforglipron, is a GLP-1 drug \u2014 the same class of medicine as the blockbuster diabetes and weight loss drugs Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro.   Orforglipron is taken orally, however, not as a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":41131,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5783],"tags":[2838,26878,23254],"class_list":["post-41130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sci-tech","tag-diabetes","tag-pill","tag-weight"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41130"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41130\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41132,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41130\/revisions\/41132"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/41131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}