(21 Jun 2024)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Sonoma, California - 20 June 2024
1. SOUNDBITE (English) Dr. Rafael Sepulveda, obesity and sleep specialist:
"The importance of this study was that in general in patients with severe sleep apnea, which means apnea-hypopnea index, of more than 30. In this case, most of the patients are on 51 apneas per hour. So the apnea-hypopnea index is the amount of events that the patient needs stopping breathing or having obstructions of the airway per hour of sleep. So, at this severity, the fact that medication and that weight loss is triggering 50%, approximately 50% of reduction in that number, that definitely, tells us that, you know, that heart and that those lungs are and that quality of sleep are, improving and reducing health risk."
++BLACK FRAMES++
2. SOUNDBITE (English) Dr. Rafael Sepulveda, obesity and sleep specialist:
"I think the results of this study is pretty significant. I mean, if we think about our population in the US, we have 30 million adults with obstructive sleep apnea. And this is going to impact a lot of those patients, I think. But the fact that we have that this tool to, treat, obesity in a preventive manner, gives us the opportunity to not either, reduce, you know, new cases, but also, be able to manage cases and try to improve health outcomes by, you know, trying to reduce that severity of sleep apnea by reducing weight."
++ENDS ON SOUNDBITE++
STORYLINE:
A popular obesity drug may help treat a dangerous disorder in which people struggle to breathe while they sleep, a new study finds.
Tirzepatide, the medication in the weight-loss drug Zepbound and also the diabetes treatment Mounjaro, appeared to reduce the severity of sleep apnea along with reducing weight and improving blood pressure and other health measures in patients with obesity who took the drug for a year.
"I think the results of this study is pretty significant," said. Dr. Rafael Sepulveda, an obesity and sleep specialist. "If we think about our population in the US, we have 30 million adults with obstructive sleep apnea. And this is going to impact, a lot of those patients."
Eli Lilly and Co., the drug's maker who paid for the research, has asked the Food and Drug Administration to expand use of the drug to treat moderate to severe sleep apnea, in which people stop and start breathing during sleep, a spokesperson said Friday. A decision is expected by the end of the year.
But an outside expert cautioned in an editorial that more research will be needed to tell if the drug can be used as “a sole treatment” for obstructive sleep apnea, which occurs when tissue in the throat relaxes and collapses during sleep, fully or partially blocking the airway. It affects an estimated 20 million Americans and can cause short-term issues such as snoring, brain fog and daytime sleepiness but also severe long-term issues such as heart disease, dementia and early death.
The research, published Friday in the New England Journal of Medicine and presented at a medical meeting, included nearly 500 people diagnosed with obesity and sleep apnea. Half of them used what's typically known as a CPAP machine that feeds oxygen through a mask to keep airways open during sleep. The other group included people for whom a CPAP machine had failed or wasn't tolerated.
The study found that patients in both groups who took tirzepatide reduced the number of episodes per hour in which their breathing slowed or stopped completely during sleep by about half to nearly 60%, compared to about 10% in people who took a dummy drug.
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