\n<\/p>\n
When Terra Field started taking Wegovy for weight loss in 2022, she finally understood what satiety truly felt like.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt felt the way I thought my body should have been operating the entire time,\u201d says Field, who adds that she has dealt with constant food cravings and binge eating since childhood.<\/p>\n
Field, now age 43, had lost more than 100 pounds in two and a half years, and she says that the relief from \u201cfood noise,\u201d a constant preoccupation with food, changed her life. Then, in early 2025, her weight loss hit a plateau. Because Field still had a ways to go to reach what she considered a healthy weight, she switched to a double-target drug called Zepbound; immediately she started to see the numbers on the scale drop again.<\/p>\n
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Like Field, many people who have taken these drugs, broadly known as glucagonlike peptide 1 (GLP-1) receptor agonists, have seen weight loss stagnate\u2014and nearly a quarter haven\u2019t seen any weight or health benefits at all. So pharmaceutical companies are racing to make the next generation of these weight-loss treatments\u2014ones that simultaneously target up to three food-related pathways in the brain. Outside of the clinic, an eager gray market has sprung up, selling unofficial versions of the drugs. As the new drugs barrel through clinical trials and reviews for U.S. Food and Drug Administration approvals, some clinicians worry that losing too much weight too fast can also be harmful for health.<\/p>\n
The initial versions of the drugs, including semaglutide (the generic name for Wegovy, which is produced by Novo Nordisk) targeted one gut hormone: GLP-1. Naturally released from the gut in response to food, GLP-1 is associated with \u201cfeeling full\u201d after a meal. It also promotes insulin secretion to keep blood sugar in check. GLP-1 receptors are \u201cvery widely distributed,\u201d particularly in the brain, says Daniel Drucker, an endocrinologist at the University of Toronto, who has consulted for Novo Nordisk, Eli Lilly and other companies developing weight-loss drugs.<\/p>\n
The body\u2019s hormone lasts only 20 to 30 minutes, Drucker says. Injected semaglutide binds to these GLP-1 receptors and reduces appetite for nearly a week, ultimately causing people to eat less and lose weight.<\/p>\n
For extra punch, Eli Lilly developed a \u201cdual agonist\u201d called tirzepatide (sold as Zepbound for weight loss), which hits the GLP-1 receptor and a second receptor\u2014gastric inhibitory polypeptide (GIP). The double whammy increased body weight loss by about six percentage points compared with semaglutide in a clinical trial.<\/p>\n
If two is good, three must be better\u2014at least that\u2019s what pharmaceutical companies are banking on. Eli Lilly is currently developing a triple agonist called retatrutide. This drug activates GLP-1, GIP and glucagon receptors. The latter receptors increase glucose levels in the blood, which might seem contradictory for treating metabolic issues such as diabetes. But the process can also lead to more insulin secretion\u2014and drive down weight. \u201cWhen you add [the three targets] together, it definitely improves control of diabetes and definitely gets the person to a lower body weight,\u201d Drucker says.<\/p>\n
In clinical trial results released in December 2025, people on the highest dose of retatrutide lost nearly 30 percent of their body weight in 68 weeks. In a clinical trial comparing tirzepatide and semaglutide, people taking tirzepatide showed roughly 20 percent drops in weight in a similar amount of time, while people on semaglutide lost around 14 percent.<\/p>\n
Eli Lilly is expecting results from several more phase 3 trials of retatrutide for obesity and type 2 diabetes this year, a spokesperson told Scientific American. Depending on those results, the company will seek FDA approval, the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n
Alongside single chemicals that target multiple receptors, others are looking to blend existing drugs into more powerful formulas. On December 18, 2025, Novo Nordisk applied for FDA approval of a two-drug combination called CagriSema. In the name, \u201cSema\u201d stands for semaglutide, while \u201cCagri\u201d refers to cagrilintide, a peptide drug that locks on to amylin receptors. Amylin is another hormone that promotes satiety and slows gastric emptying. Similar to GLP-1 receptors, amylin receptors are also in areas of the brain related to appetite, and stimulating them sends messages that you\u2019re not hungry, Drucker says. But amylin receptors and GLP-1 receptors are on slightly different groups of brain cells. \u201cActivating those two pathways will give you more weight loss than just one medicine alone,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Cagrilintide might also ease some of GLP-1 drugs\u2019 common gastrointestinal side effects, such as severe nausea and vomiting, says Jesse Richards, an internal medicine and obesity clinician at the University of Oklahoma School of Community Medicine. (Richards gives paid talks for Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly.) Many GLP-1 receptors are scattered in the brain\u2019s area postrema, which \u201cdrives most of your nausea,\u201d Richards explains, while the amylin receptors occur on a slightly different pathway that corresponds to less nausea.<\/p>\n
In trials, participants taking CagriSema lost about 23 percent of their body weight in 68 weeks. A representative for Novo Nordisk told Scientific American that the company hopes to see FDA review in 2026.<\/p>\n
Pharmaceutical companies stand to make a lot of money from these drugs. The latest results from Eli Lilly\u2019s retatrutide trials helped the company hit a $1-trillion stock value. The wave of upcoming medications could also help people who haven\u2019t responded well to existing GLP-1 drugs.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople differ in underlying biology and appetite regulation, and some are unable to reach or maintain higher doses [of current drugs] because of side effects,\u201d says Areesha Moiz, a clinical epidemiologist at the Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research in Quebec.<\/p>\n
New drugs could be better tolerated, but scientists and clinicians are cautious about their intense weight-loss effects\u2014retatrutide can reduce someone\u2019s weight by a third in less than a year, for instance. Such extreme drops in weight can be dangerous. \u201cLarge weight loss increases risk of gallstones no matter how it\u2019s achieved, and there\u2019s increasing attention to losing muscle alongside fat,\u201d Moiz says. \u201cWith very strong drugs, some people can lose too much and become underweight. And in older adults, rapid weight loss can also contribute to low blood pressure and dizziness.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Field, who is still responding to Zepbound, the drug advances have been both life-altering and lifesaving. If she hits another plateau or if the food noise returns, Field says, she would try a new, souped-up version of these medications. But she adds that she tries to \u201cbe fat-positive\u201d and hopes others feel empowered to make their own decisions about their body size, especially when weight stigma remains an issue in society as well as in the medical community.<\/p>\n
The rise of hypereffective weight-loss drugs has also raised some important\u2014and thorny\u2014ethical questions. Prices of the drugs remain sky-high, and insurance coverage can be limited or fully denied. In the next five years, as these advanced drugs enter the market, Richards predicts that people and their doctors could effectively \u201cchoose\u201d the exact weight they desire\u2014and \u201cthat is a scary concept.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When Terra Field started taking Wegovy for weight loss in 2022, she finally understood what satiety truly felt like. \u201cIt felt the way I thought my body should have been operating the entire time,\u201d says Field, who adds that she has dealt with constant food cravings and binge eating since childhood. Field, now age 43,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":43912,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[22891,542,19906,6253,809,15606,1474,22892],"class_list":{"0":"post-43911","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-comingand","9":"tag-drugs","10":"tag-glp1","11":"tag-stronger","12":"tag-theyre","13":"tag-wegovy","14":"tag-weightloss","15":"tag-zepbound"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43911\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/43912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}