Posting this because the summary going around does not say what the paper says, and the difference matters for how people here are using it.
Steady state is the thing most people miss. The terminal half-life is about a week, so every dose step takes four to five weeks to fully express itself. Judging a step at day ten is judging the ascent, not the plateau, and it is the single commonest reason people escalate before they needed to.
Where I think it is weakest: the population was selected and supported in ways a real cohort is not, so I would read the effect size as a ceiling rather than an expectation.
What I actually want to know is how much of the between-person variation is pharmacokinetic and how much is just adherence measured badly. I have searched first, so if this is covered somewhere point me at it and I will read it.
Figures above are from the primary publication rather than the press summary. If a number here disagrees with one you have, post yours and we will work out which of us is reading a secondary source.
NeuroNate said:Steady state is the thing most people miss.
That holds for the injectable. The oral formulation has different absorption behaviour and the dose numbers are not interchangeable, which is worth saying out loud because people quote them as if they were.
NeuroNate said:Steady state is the thing most people miss.
This is where I part company with the consensus forming above. The trial means are being read too generously in this thread. STEP populations were selected, supported, and titrated by protocol, and the real-world curves are consistently a few points worse. That difference is not noise, it is what happens when you remove the study infrastructure.
Ask again with the specifics and you will get a better answer than this one.
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View ResultsTaking the question as asked, rather than the general version of it. The mechanism that matters here is not stomach emptying, it is central. GLP-1 receptor agonism in the arcuate nucleus stimulates POMC neurons and suppresses AgRP/NPY signalling, which is why the effect is appetite and food salience rather than physical fullness. Delayed gastric emptying largely tachyphylaxes over the first months; the appetite effect does not.
Dr.PainCLE said:The oral formulation has different absorption behaviour and the dose numbers are not interchangeable, which is worth saying out loud because people…
Agreed, though "tolerable" needs defining. A dose you tolerate by eating almost nothing is not tolerated, it is being paid for somewhere else — usually in lean mass, sometimes in adherence three months later.