Drugs such as Eli Lilly’s Zepbound (tirzepatide) and Mounjaro and Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic and Wegovy belong to a family of drugs called GLP-1 agonists. These are used popularly for weight loss or diabetes. However, some studies have suggested they could be beneficial for other conditions as well.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted Zepbound “fast track” approval to study the drug’s effectiveness for obese adults with comorbidities like sleep apnea in 2022.
Sleep Apnea simply means "shortness of breath while sleeping". The upper airway is blocked in case of Obstructive Sleep Apnea, which causes short pauses in breathing while sleeping. This can lead to daytime tiredness, headaches, and other short-term symptoms, as well as an increased risk of cardiovascular disease and diabetes.
People with sleep apnea experience an increased risk of several cardiovascular diseases, including coronary artery disease, stroke, hypertension, etc. and these people are at a higher risk of developing sleep apnea.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
The apnea-hypopnea index (AHI) is a diagnostic tool used in the study. It measures the average number of apneas and hypopneas per hour of sleep. All 400 participants were overweight or obese adults and had moderate to severe sleep apnea.
Two studies were conducted in which participants who used Zepbound experienced fewer AHI events—when a person partially or fully stops breathing while asleep per hour compared to a placebo after 52 weeks, Eli Lilly said.
In the first study, 27.4 AHI events per hour among participants were reduced who did not use a positive airway pressure (PAP) machine, compared to those who took a placebo, only 4.8 events per hour were reduced.
During a second study, the participants used PAP machines. In this case, Zepbound led to an average reduction of 30.4 AHI events per hour as compared to 6 events per hour for the participants taking a placebo.
Zepbound’s ability to help people lose their weight also helped reduce sleep apnea events, as participants in either trial lost about 20% of their body weight.
Eli Lilly
The results of this study will be presented at the American Diabetes Association’s 84th Scientific Sessions in June, the company said.
The results are significant enough to warrant utilizing medications to help people lose weight so that their sleep apnea improves.
Christine Ren-Fielding, MD, division chief of bariatric surgery at NYU Langone.
In a similar case, a study was published last month, which said that weekly injection of semaglutide was found to reduce the severity of liver disease in people with HIV. Novo Nordisk previously said late-stage trial data showed that injections could also reduce heart-failure-related symptoms adding semaglutide was also being tested to treat dementia or alcohol addiction.
(Input from various sources)
(Rehash/Dr. Pragati Priya/MSM)
