(This is an excerpt of the Health Rounds newsletter, where we present latest medical studies on Tuesdays and Thursdays.)
By Nancy Lapid
Sept 23 (Reuters) – Today we report on a real-world study that may help inform which drug is the best GLP-1 option for those with significant recent weight gain. We also cover a study in mice that sheds light on unanswered questions about allergic reactions in people.
ORAL WEGOVY MAY BE BEST FOR RECENT WEIGHT GAIN
The pill version of Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy may be the best GLP-1 option for people looking to drop recently gained weight, according to an early analysis of real-world data.
Reviewing data on 3,011 patients with a prescription for oral Wegovy and a follow-up weight recorded within 180 days, researchers found that patients who had recently gained weight were far more likely to be super-responders – defined as losing more than 10% of their starting body weight during treatment.
Oral Wegovy was approved in the US in December of last year. None of the patients in the current study had previously used other GLP-1 products.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re a 30-year-old who recently in the last five years gained significant weight, or you’re a 60-year-old or a 90-year-old that in the last five years gained significant weight, you’re far more likely within months to reverse those five years of body weight gain” than if your weight gain trajectory extends further back into the past, said study leader Venky Soundararajan of data analytics firm nference.
Wegovy pill “super-responders” weighed less than non-responders at the start of treatment, averaging 207 pounds versus 224.21 pounds (94.1 kg versus 101.7 kg), according to a report posted online but not yet peer-reviewed.
The researchers also found that super-responders were more likely to have escalated to a dose above the 1.5-milligram starting dose by day 60.
In addition, as patients continued taking the pills, their blood pressure improved significantly, with reductions directly correlated with the amount of body weight loss.
The authors emphasize that their findings do not prove cause and effect. Rather, they say, their results should prompt more rigorous studies to test whether pre-treatment weight trajectory is truly a predictor of response.
REPEATED EXPOSURES MAY MAKE ALLERGIES WORSE
A study in mice offers a potential explanation for two longstanding questions about allergies: why do they often emerge only after repeated exposure, and why do people with one allergy frequently develop others?
The findings, published in the journal Immunity, could lead to future interventions.
Sensory neurons — the nerve cells that carry signals like itch and pain from the body’s sensory receptors to the central nervous system — retain a “memory” of allergens that may help explain why allergies develop over time, researchers found.
The team had previously found that sensory neurons directly sense certain allergens and help start the allergic immune response. The new study shows that these neurons do not simply detect allergens in the moment but can retain a metabolically encoded record of previous exposures that allows them to respond more strongly to later exposures, even after the original allergen is gone.
“Neurons are known for their ability to form memories,” study leader Dr. Caroline Sokol of Mass General Brigham in Boston said in a statement.
“We asked whether an initial allergen exposure might leave a trace, not enough on its own to trigger a full allergic response, but enough to prime the neurons to respond more strongly the next time.”
Indeed, the researchers found that an initial exposure activates a specific signaling pathway in neurons that not only primes them to later respond to the same allergen, as the team hypothesized, but also to other allergens that share the same enzymatic activity but have different molecular structures, they reported.
This cross-allergen response may help explain why developing sensitivity to one allergen can increase susceptibility to others, they said.
“Now that we know what may cause people to become allergic and pick up more sensitivities, we can design ways to stop it from happening,” Sokol said.
(To receive the full newsletter in your inbox for free sign up here)
(Reporting by Nancy Lapid; Editing by Bill Berkrot)
Comments