A popular anti-obesity medication could help treat a dangerous disorder in which people have difficulty breathing while sleeping. a new study finds.
Tirzepatide, the drug in the weight-loss drug Zepbound and also in the diabetes treatment Mounjaro, appeared to reduce the severity of sleep apnea, along with weight reduction and improvements in blood pressure and other health measures in patients with obesity. who took the medicine for one year.
Eli Lilly and Co., the drug’s maker that paid for the research, asked the Food and Drug Administration to expand the drug’s use to treat moderate to severe sleep apnea, in which people stop and start breathing during sleep. a spokesperson said Friday. . A decision is expected by the end of the year.
But an external expert warned in an essay that more research will be needed to know whether the drug can be used as a “sole treatment” for obstructive sleep apnea, which occurs when tissue in the throat relaxes and collapses during sleep, partially or completely blocking the airway. It affects about 20 million Americans and can cause short-term problems such as snoring, brain fog and daytime sleepiness, but also serious long-term problems such as heart disease, dementia and early death.
The research, published Friday in the New England Journal of Medicine and presented at a medical meeting, included nearly 500 people diagnosed with obesity and sleep apnea. Half of them used what is commonly known as a CPAP machine, which delivers oxygen through a mask to keep the airway open while sleeping. The other group included people for whom a CPAP machine failed or was not tolerated.
The study found that patients in both groups who received weekly injections of tirzepatide reduced the number of episodes per hour in which breathing slowed or stopped completely during sleep by about half, to nearly 60%, compared with about 10% for people who received a dummy. medicine. Up to half of patients who took tirzepatide reduced apnea episodes enough to potentially resolve the disorder, compared with up to 16% of those who used the placebo medication, according to research.
On average, patients taking tirzepatide also lost between 18% and 20% of their body weight and experienced improvements in blood pressure and a condition in which blood oxygen drops during sleep. Patients also reported better sleep and fewer sleep disturbances, the study found.
The new research shows that tirzepatide is “a more effective knife in the drawer” in treating sleep apnea, said lead author Dr. Atul Malhotra, a sleep medicine specialist at the University of California, San Diego.
In an accompanying editorial, Dr. He also noted that cost and access continue to be obstacles to the use of tirzepatide and that adding the drug as a treatment could exacerbate racial and other disparities in the treatment of sleep apnea.
Paul Peppard, a sleep medicine researcher at the University of Wisconsin who was not involved in the study, said weight loss has long been recommended as a way to reduce the severity of sleep apnea by expanding lung capacity, reducing fat in the airways and improving oxygen use. While diet and exercise can encourage weight loss and reduce the consequences of the disease, the ongoing obesity epidemic in the U.S. proves that losing weight is difficult for many people, he said. In these cases, medications such as tirzepatide can help.
“I hope these drugs can be used as a tool to treat many of the established outcomes of obesity,” Peppard said.
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