Users of a new weight-loss drug had lower blood pressure during the study
A study of the weight-loss drug tirzepatide found that people who took it had significantly lower blood pressure after 36 weeks of taking the drug.
Tirzepatide, made by Eli Lilly, is used to treat type 2 diabetes, under the brand name Mounjaro, and to treat obesity, under the brand name Zepbound. It is the newest in a new class of weight loss drugs, and its main competitor is semaglutide, made by Novo Nordisk and sold as Ozempic for diabetes and as Wegovy for weight loss. For both drugs, researchers assessed whether they have additional effects beyond just weight loss.
The blood pressure study, supported by Eli Lilly and published Monday in the journal Hypertension, was part of a larger effort to assess tirzepatide's effects on weight loss. Researchers had already discovered that people taking the drug had lower blood pressure when the measurements were taken in a doctor's office. The new study applied stricter criteria: Did participants taking the drug have lower pressure when measured with a 24-hour monitor?
They did. Those taking the drug had systolic blood pressure – the pressure on blood vessels when the heart contracts – that was 7.4 to 10.0 milligrams of mercury lower than that of participants taking a placebo. Systolic pressure is believed to be an accurate predictor of cardiovascular disease risk.
The blood pressure reduction, says Dr. James de Lemos, a cardiologist at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and lead author of the study, is about what you would expect with a full dose of a blood pressure drug. As such, he said, the drug may be useful for people trying to control their pressure and reduce their risk of heart attack and stroke (although the study does not suggest that tirzepatide can be a replacement for other blood pressure medications).
But, he noted, it was not possible to distinguish the drug's effect, if any, on blood pressure from the known effect that weight loss has on lowering blood pressure.
Dr. Benjamin Ansell, a blood pressure specialist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who was not involved in the study, said he did not find the result surprising.
“One might also hypothesize that weight loss may allow for increased exercise or better sleep/reduced sleep apnea, all of which could 'additionally' lower blood pressure,” he wrote in an email.
A more interesting effect of a drug in this class, noted Dr. Ansell, is the recent discovery that semaglutide helps patients with a condition known as heart failure preserve ejection fraction – a common consequence of obesity and high blood pressure. It is a chronic and progressive disease that is disabling and destroys quality of life. Most patients with this type of heart failure are obese, and obesity is believed to contribute to the disease and its progression.
In a big one study According to Novo Nordisk, patients taking semaglutide had fewer symptoms of the disease and were able to exercise better, researchers found.
That result, added Dr. Ansell added, “demonstrated profound clinical significance in improving their functioning and reducing hospital readmissions.”
And that finding adds to another Novo Nordisk result which showed that semaglutide reduced the risk of cardiac events such as heart attacks.