“Patients, providers and the public do not always understand obesity is a chronic disease that often requires ongoing treatment, which can mean that treatment is stopped once weight goals are met,” said Jeff Emmick, MD, senior vice president, product development, Lilly, in a statement.
However, the study shows “that continued therapy can help people living with obesity maintain their weight loss,” he added.
“If you look at the magnitude of the weight gain, they gain back about half the weight they had originally lost over a one-year period of time,” lead study author Dr. Louis Aronne, an obesity medicine specialist and professor of metabolic research at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City, was quoted as saying to CNN.
About 17 percent of those who stopped Zepbound maintained at least 80 percent of their original weight loss, the study said. Meanwhile, 9 in 10 of the people who continued Zepbound were able to maintain at least 80 percent of the weight they lost.
Source: IANS
