Eli Lilly’s highly anticipated weight loss drug retatrutide may also do wonders for people’s restless nights, recent research shows.
Last week, researchers published two trials of retatrutide looking at how it affected people with obstructive sleep apnea. In both trials, the experimental drug significantly reduced symptoms compared to a placebo, they found. The findings are the latest to suggest that effective weight loss treatments like retatrutide and similar GLP-1 drugs can also help manage sleep apnea.
More than one indication
Retatrutide is part of the next generation of obesity and diabetes medications that leverage certain kinds of hunger-related hormones like GLP-1. Retatrutide in particular mimics GLP-1, GIP, and the hormone glucagon.
Large-scale randomized, placebo-controlled, and double-blinded studies so far have shown that retatrutide may be the most potent obesity drug developed yet. Given these results, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and other regulatory agencies are almost certain to grant Eli Lilly an approval for retatrutide next year. Obesity is also known to raise the risk of other health conditions, including obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), so Eli Lilly decided to test whether retatrutide could have added benefits there as well.
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The company carried out two separate trials of retatrutide for OSA, both nestled within the larger phase III trials of the drug. One trial involved people with type 2 diabetes and obesity who also had OSA, while the other involved people with OSA and obesity without diabetes. In total, these trials included roughly 700 participants.
Sleep apnea is defined by having multiple and sustained (10 seconds or longer) episodes of no breathing throughout the night—anywhere from 5 to 100 times an hour. OSA happens when airway muscles physically block a person’s breathing. Though snoring is a very common and noticeable sign of sleep apnea, it doesn’t guarantee that you have it.
In both trials and across different doses of the drug, people taking retatrutide on average experienced fewer episodes of apnea (a temporary pause in breathing) and/or hypopneas (shallow breathing) while sleeping than people taking a placebo. More than half of retatrutide users in one trial also experienced a remission of their OSA or had their apnea downgraded to mild. At that point, many participants no longer required the use of a positive airway pressure machine, the gold standard treatment for OSA, the researchers noted.
The findings from both trials were published last week in the New England Journal of Medicine.
A new medication for sleep apnea?
Some people will likely still need other treatments to manage their sleep apnea even if they were to go on retatrutide and lose significant weight. Importantly, the benefits of the drug on apnea symptoms were smaller but still significant for people with both obesity and type 2 diabetes. Excess body weight also isn’t the only risk factor for OSA, so it’s unlikely that retatrutide would do much for individuals with OSA who aren’t obese or overweight (roughly a quarter of cases).
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Still, GLP-1-based drugs are already being used as an adjunct treatment for many people with both conditions. In late 2024, Eli Lilly’s tirzepatide (which combines GLP-1 and GIP) secured FDA approval for treating OSA. And there are other pill-based treatments being developed for sleep apnea as well.
While retatrutide will get plenty of buzz for its weight loss results, it may also someday soon bring relief for many of the estimated 50 million Americans who additionally suffer from obstructive sleep apnea.
