Mounjaro and Zepbound are popular drugs which have Tirzepatide as the major ingredient in them. Both of these are produced by Eli Lilly; Mounjaro is used for diabetes and Zepbound is used for weight loss. The company Eli Lily said that both of these drugs help to improve symptoms of heart failure in patients with obesity.

Patients who got tirzepatide were 38% less likely to be hospitalized, need to increase their heart failure medication or die because of heart complications, compared to people who got a placebo, Lily’s trial found. Also, patients who got tirzepatide had less shortness of breath, fatigue and swelling of the lower legs. The trial was conducted for 52 weeks and the results of the study were released in a news release.

However, the results have not been published in a medical journal or reviewed by outside scientists.

Dr. Patricia Pellikka, the Betty Knight Scripps professor of cardiovascular disease clinical research at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota who was not involved in the study, according to a report in NBC News said, “I think it’s quite impressive.

“For a long time, we’ve had rather limited therapies for these patients. It should be a very welcome tool for the toolbox for patients.”

Speaking of her patients with heart failure, Dr. Anu Lala, an advanced heart failure and transplant cardiologist at Mount Sinai Fuster Heart Hospital in New York City, said, “These drugs, while affording weight loss, have shown to improve symptoms of heart failure, and that has been sort of revolutionary in our field.”

She added, “It’s improved the symptoms of heart failure. It improves the functional capacity of what these patients are now able to do. It improves their quality of life.” Lala said she is already using the medications with her own patients.

“These individuals are just markedly short of breath,” said Lala, who was not involved with the research. She has advised Novo Nordisk but not Lilly.

For the study, the researchers analysed people with heart failure with preserved ejection fraction, which affects as many as half of heart failure patients. In that type of condition, the walls of the heart stiffen, making it more difficult for the heart to fill with blood and then pump enough blood to the body. Dr. Jeff Emmick, senior vice president of product development at Lilly said that about 60% of patients with that type of heart failure also have obesity.

The mechanism of how tirzepatide helped heart failure patients is still in unclear. However, Emmick hypothesized that it might be linked to a reduction in fat that can build up around the heart. He said, “We’ll be looking to see whether there’s a reduction in epicardial fat.”

Emmick also pointed to certain markers of inflammation that medications like tirzepatide have been shown to decrease. Lily in April said that tirzepatide also helped to reduce sleep apnoea in people with obesity.

Earlier this month, India’s apex drug regulator, the Central Drug Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO) approved Eli Lilly’s tirzepatide. CDSCO has approved the import of single-dose vials and pre-filled pens of the injectable drug in six different doses which range from 2.5 mg to 12.5 mg.

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