Is there another benefit besides weight loss of GLP-1s in people with severe obesity? Elizabeth Tracey reports
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GLP-1 receptor agonists are effective in helping most people lose weight, and now a new study suggests that in those with severe obesity, a BMI of 42 or greater and who have a type of heart failure, this condition may be reversible by improving the ability of a subunit in heart muscle cells called a sarcomere to contract. David Kass, a cardiologist at Johns Hopkins and study author, explains.
Kass: We have 16 patients who happened over a year and a half before we ever saw them at Johns Hopkins to have been put on one of the weight loss drugs. They lost different amounts of weight, we have their BMI. It's clear that the more BMI went down the better the sarcomere was. What's important is that they all started at about the same level so this really is not that the people who weren't as obese were doing better and no they're all kind of starting the same place, it's really how much you lost how much it changed that seems to be really important. :30
Kass would like to do a randomized trial to confirm this observation. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.
