in our health lead, a significant breakthrough in an experimental medication for weightloss. a study of eli lilly s nextgen drug shows the highest amount of weightloss for any drug yet, up to 24% over the course of 48 weeks. meg tirrell joins me for more on this. break down these results and how it compares to other currently approved medicines specifically for weightloss. yeah. so this is a new class of medicines. we ve heard about ozempic and wygovi. they go after one hormone. we ve been seeing iterations of these drugs to get better
weightloss. mounjaro has gotten up to 21% weightloss in clinical trials compared with about 15% for wygovi, which is approved for obesity. now if you re looking at this new medicine, retatritide. it doesn t even have a brand name because it s only in mid-stage trials. they ve seen 24% weightloss over a shorter period of time than these drugs that are already on the market that one mimics three different hormones. so you re sort of seeing that turbo-charged amount of weightloss in this trial. all of these are injectable drugs given once a week right now. we ve also been seeing data on pill versions which produce about 15% weightloss too. so this field is dramatically opening up. and it sounds very promising. are there any side effects for these drugs? there definitely are. some of the things we hear about are gastrointestinal side effects like nausea vomiting, constipation. it tends to be worse when you re just starting on the drugs and slowly increasing the dose.