Resistance exercise reduced lean tissue loss on tirzepatide
Lean soft tissue fell 3.57 kg with resistance exercise versus 4.67 kg with usual activities over 40 weeks of tirzepatide treatment.
Our read
Interventions- Studied:
- Randomized trial in 120 adults with overweight or obesity, against tirzepatide with usual activities (Blinded, sample size calculated, registered ACTRN12623001236684)
- What changed:
- Adults taking tirzepatide lost 1.09 kg less lean tissue with resistance exercise than with usual activities
- The catch:
- Eli Lilly supplied tirzepatide and reviewed the protocol and manuscript
- In the record:
- The 1,660th paper on resistance training with results in people; 3,630 on record in all.
Editor of record: Boris Djordjevic · AgingResearch.News
The 120 adults aged 50–70 with overweight or obesity—60 men and 60 postmenopausal women—received tirzepatide for 40 weeks in a randomized trial. They either added supervised resistance exercise three times weekly or continued usual activities. Weekly injections started at 2.5 mg and increased every four weeks toward 15 mg by week 20. Exercise reduced loss of lean soft tissue, the body’s nonfat, nonbone tissue. Weight and fat loss were similar; strength rose with exercise but fell without it.
Nausea affected about half; vomiting, constipation, diarrhea and indigestion each affected about one-third. Lightheadedness affected about 20–30%, low mood about 15–20%, and lethargy or weakness about 15%. Headache, insomnia, low blood pressure, injection reactions and general pain affected about 10–20%. Reported side-effect frequencies were similar between groups. Six participants withdrew because of adverse events. Six serious events occurred, all judged unrelated to the interventions.
Why it matters
Obesity therapy in middle-aged and older adults raises a question beyond weight loss: how to retain lean tissue and muscle function while losing fat.
Caveats
Body scans measured lean soft tissue, not muscle alone. Participants reported less than 60 minutes of moderate or more intense exercise weekly; the trial excluded people with diabetes or cardiovascular disease and premenopausal women.
From the paper
- Participants
In total, 89 participants self-reported any adverse events occurring over 5 weeks, 23 over 6−10 weeks and none for more than 16 weeks (Extended Data Table 6).
- Primary outcome
A similar result was seen with appendicular lean soft tissue mass (effect of time: P < 0.001; group × time interaction: P < 0.001; between-group difference: 0.63 kg; 95% CI: 0.30−0.96; Cohen’s d = 0.11) (Table 1, Fig. 3 and Extended Data Table 4).
Results, Primary outcomes: fat mass and total lean soft tissue mass
- Harms
Other adverse events included feeling lightheaded (approximately 20−30%), low mood (approximately 15−20%), lethargy/weakness (approximately 15%) and headache, insomnia, hypotension, injection site reactions and general pain (approximately 10−20%) …
- Limitation
We chose DXA to assess total body and appendicular lean soft tissue mass because DXA is widely available and validated for body composition assessment.
Quoted word for word from the full text on nature.com.
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