{"id":135014,"date":"2025-11-14T17:30:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-14T17:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/135014\/"},"modified":"2025-11-14T17:30:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-14T17:30:08","slug":"weight-loss-drug-zepbound-is-being-tested-as-a-treatment-for-long-covid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/135014\/","title":{"rendered":"Weight-Loss Drug Zepbound Is Being Tested as a Treatment for Long Covid"},"content":{"rendered":"

Obesity wonder drugs Wegovy and Zepbound<\/a> are already showing that they can reduce the risk of cardiovascular and chronic kidney disease<\/a> in addition to helping people lose weight. Now, a US-wide trial will test whether tirzepatide, the active ingredient in Zepbound, may be an effective treatment for people with long Covid<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Part of a class of drugs known as GLP-1s<\/a>, tirzepatide acts on receptors in the gut and the brain to regulate appetite. As a result, people shed pounds by eating less. But decreased body weight doesn\u2019t fully explain the positive effects on the heart and kidney. Mounting evidence suggests that the drugs have a broad anti-inflammatory effect<\/a> on the body\u2014a mechanism that\u2019s of interest for treating long Covid.<\/p>\n

As many as 20 million people in the US<\/a> have experienced long Covid, a chronic condition that lasts for at least three months after an initial infection. While more than 200 symptoms of long Covid have been documented, some of the most common include coughing, shortness of breath, brain fog, fatigue, mood changes, trouble sleeping, and body aches.<\/p>\n

Scientists still don\u2019t fully understand how and why long Covid occurs, but they\u2019ve found persistent inflammation in many patients. This chronic inflammation may be caused by lingering traces of virus in the body or by misdirected antibodies, known as autoantibodies, that attack a person\u2019s own cells and tissues. The hope is that tirzepatide could tamp down this inflammation to improve patients\u2019 symptoms.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe rationale for a GLP-1 drug is its powerful body-wide and brain anti-inflammatory properties,\u201d says Eric Topol, a cardiologist and the director of the La Jolla, California-based Scripps Research Translational Institute, which is sponsoring the trial.<\/p>\n

Scripps researchers are recruiting<\/a> 1,000 people across the country who are 18 years of age or older and have medical documentation of long Covid. Unlike most medical studies, which typically require multiple in-person visits, the Scripps trial is fully remote. Participants will be randomized to receive either tirzepatide or a placebo by mail and will take it for a year. They\u2019ll receive a fitness tracker so that researchers can measure their step count, an important indicator of fatigue. Participants will also get a smart scale and will weigh in regularly. Since GLP-1s are used for weight management, study investigators want to make sure participants don\u2019t lose too much weight during the trial.<\/p>\n

Julia Moore Vogel, coprincipal investigator of the trial who herself has long Covid, says the remote design of the trial was intentional. \u201cFor the long Covid population, it\u2019s so crucial, because if you\u2019re requiring people to come into a clinic, you\u2019re systematically excluding the most severely affected folks who are housebound or bedbound. It was really important to us to make sure that those people are included.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Obesity wonder drugs Wegovy and Zepbound are already showing that they can reduce the risk of cardiovascular and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":135015,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[2815,4701,7013,134,524,111,139,69,147],"class_list":{"0":"post-135014","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-medication","8":"tag-covid-19","9":"tag-diseases","10":"tag-glp-1","11":"tag-health","12":"tag-medication","13":"tag-new-zealand","14":"tag-newzealand","15":"tag-nz","16":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135014"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135014\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/135015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}