Obesity drugs used in Munjaro and Zepbound could help treat dangerous sleep apnea

(AP) — A popular obesity drug could help treat a dangerous condition that makes it difficult to breathe while sleeping. New Research find.

Tirzepatide, a drug found in the weight-loss drug Zepbound and the diabetes drug Munjaro, appears to reduce the severity of sleep apnea, along with weight loss and improvements in blood pressure and other health markers, when taken by obese people for a year.

The drug's maker, Eli Lilly & Co., which funded the research, has asked the Food and Drug Administration to expand the drug's use to treat moderate to severe sleep apnea, in which breathing stops and starts during sleep, a spokesman said Friday. A decision is expected by the end of the year.

But outside experts have issued warnings. In an editorial More research is needed to determine whether the drug can be used as a “sole treatment” for obstructive sleep apnea, which occurs when throat tissue relaxes and collapses during sleep, completely or partially blocking the airway. The condition affects an estimated 20 million Americans and can lead to short-term problems like snoring, brain fog and daytime sleepiness, as well as serious long-term problems like heart disease, dementia and premature death.

The study, published Friday in the New England Journal of Medicine and presented at a medical conference, involved nearly 500 people who were obese and diagnosed with sleep apnea. Half of them used a device commonly known as a CPAP machine, which delivers oxygen through a mask to keep the airway open while they sleep. The other group included people whose CPAP machines had broken or who could not tolerate them.

Patients in both groups who received weekly injections of tirzepatide saw a reduction of about half to nearly 60 percent in the number of episodes per hour in which their breathing slowed or stopped completely while they were sleeping, compared with about 10 percent in those who received a placebo. Up to half of the patients taking tirzepatide reduced their apnea episodes enough to eliminate the disorder, compared with up to 16 percent of those given the placebo, the study found.

On average, patients taking tirzepatide lost 18 to 20 percent of their body weight, improved their blood pressure and symptoms of low blood oxygen levels while sleeping, and reported better quality sleep and fewer sleep disorders, the study found.

Lead author Dr. Atul Malhotra, a sleep medicine specialist at the University of California, San Diego, said the new study shows tirzepatide is “a more effective secret weapon” in treating sleep apnea.

In an accompanying editorial, Dr. Sanjay Patel, a sleep medicine specialist at the University of Pittsburgh, cautioned that because of the way improvement is measured, it “remains unclear” whether tirzepatide can treat sleep apnea in patients in the real world. He also noted that cost and availability remain barriers to tirzepatide use, and adding the drug to the treatment arsenal could exacerbate racial and other disparities in the treatment of sleep apnea.

Dr. Paul Peppard, a sleep medicine researcher at the University of Wisconsin who was not involved in the study, said weight loss has long been recommended as a way to reduce the severity of sleep apnea by increasing lung capacity, reducing fat in the airways and improving oxygen utilization. Diet and exercise can encourage weight loss and reduce the impact of the disease, but the ongoing obesity epidemic in the United States means that losing weight is proving difficult for many people, he said. In those cases, drugs such as tirzepatide may help.

“We expect that these drugs could be used as a means to treat many of the known symptoms of obesity,” Peppard said.

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