Dispatch 001: Five Retatrutide Phase 3 Trials Have Finished And None Has Posted Results

What this dispatch is

Most newsletters in this field report press releases. A press release is a company describing its own study before anyone else can look at it. That is the weakest kind of evidence that still counts as news. This one works from the public study records instead. That makes it less exciting sometimes, but you can always check it. The first issue turns out to be mostly about what is missing, and that is the story.

Five big retatrutide studies have finished and none has posted results

This is the most-asked question about retatrutide, and the honest answer is not a number. The numbers are sitting somewhere, unpublished. Below is every big final-stage retatrutide study that has passed that date, read live from ClinicalTrials.gov for this issue.

A gap between finishing a study and posting its results is normal, and partly allowed by law. US rules generally allow twelve months, and results often show up at a conference or in a journal before they reach the public record. So this is not an accusation. It is about what you can and cannot know today. That matters if you are making a choice about retatrutide based on something you read. What you can check right now are the results from the earlier, smaller studies. Any big-study retatrutide result you see should trace back to a named conference talk or paper. If it does not, treat it as a rumour.

A CagriSema against tirzepatide study finished, at a dose worth noticing

Look at the tirzepatide dose before you read the headline when it comes. Tirzepatide is approved at regular doses of 5, 10 and 15 mg, and it works best at 10 and 15. This study kept it at 5 mg, the lowest of the three. There may be a fair reason. 5 mg is a real regular dose, and matching it to a low CagriSema dose makes some sense. There is also an obvious business reason. Novo Nordisk paid for this study and sells the drug being compared against a rival's.

We flag it now, before any results, because once a result becomes a headline, nobody sees the dose. This site already reports one CagriSema head-to-head that went the other way. In REDEFINE 4, 809 people over 84 weeks, CagriSema lost to tirzepatide 15 mg on weight, 23.0% against 25.5%. It did not match tirzepatide. Same two drugs, different doses, and the story can be spun either way. See CagriSema, tirzepatide and the head-to-head comparison.

A review of 378 studies ranked what prevents diabetes, and a supplement made the list

Two things in this paper matter more than the ranking. The first is how close metformin plus diet and exercise came to a GLP-1 drug: 0.27 against 0.26. For a cheap generic pill plus a lifestyle program, that is a striking result, and it almost never makes a headline. See metformin.

The second is the blood sugar list. Only four things lowered long-term blood sugar (HbA1c) by more than 0.3 points at one year. Curcumin was one of them, at minus 0.49, ahead of GLP-1 drugs alone at minus 0.41. That is a surprising spot for a plant extract, and it needs the warning this site puts on every curcumin result. The studies used special forms of curcumin made to absorb better, not turmeric. And a review that pools studies is only as good as the studies it pools. Take it as a reason to take curcumin seriously, not as a reason to expect a drug-sized effect. Profile: curcumin. The supplements section explains why a blood test and a retest matter more than a ranking.

Also logged this fortnight

• SYNERGY-Outcomes (NCT07165028) began signing people up. It is a big study of 4,500 people with fatty liver disease, testing tirzepatide and retatrutide against a dummy shot. It will count real liver problems, not just a blood marker. It is due to finish in August 2030.
• A study of tirzepatide in 134 people with overweight or obesity and long-term kidney disease (NCT05536804) finished. It is small, but kidney results are where the big long-term questions are for this group of drugs.
• A review compared tirzepatide with dulaglutide in type 2 diabetes, in people with and without heart disease from clogged arteries. It never put the two in the same study. It estimated a head-to-head that nobody ran, which is useful but is not the same as a real study.
• A review pooled studies of GLP-1 type drugs in people who have had weight-loss surgery. That group is growing fast, and almost no studies have looked at them on their own.

How to read a dispatch

1. 01Check whether the item is a result or just a signed-up study. A finished study with no posted results tells you results exist, not what they say.
2. 02Check what it was compared with, and at what dose. Beating a low dose of a rival drug is a different claim from beating its best dose.
3. 03Check who paid. That does not make a result wrong. It tells you which way the design choices were likely to lean.
4. 04Check whether it measured something that happens to a person or a number in a blood tube. Both matter. They are not the same thing.
5. 05Follow the link to the profile. One new paper rarely changes the picture, and the profile is where the whole picture lives.