Visual demonstration of weight loss and health risk improvement with a dual GIP and GLP-1 receptor agonist.

Abstract

Background: Body weight and health-outcome results of highly effective new GLP-1R agonist medicine trials are usually presented in scientific reports in the form of standard graphs and tables. These representations are not easily translated to what the average participant looked like or their health risks at the outset of the study and how improvements in adiposity and clinical measures changed with treatment. Two recently developed methods for visually presenting complex weight and health-risk information that encapsulate substantial amounts of clinical trial observations were recently developed that can potentially supplement and give new insights into conventional GLP-1R agonist scientific reports. The current study aim was to put these visual presentations into a demonstration format to explore if and to what extent they convey new or useful information beyond traditional graphical and tabular approaches.

Methods: The first developed approach was the capability of generating, with manifold regression, humanoid avatars with accurate anthropometric dimensions. The second developed approach, body roundness index (BRI), associates a person's shape phenotype with high-risk adiposity components and multiple health outcomes; BRI can be displayed in a visual format. These two approaches were applied to produce visual representations of body size and shape in Surmount 1 average male and female participants (maximal-tolerated dose group) at baseline and after 72-weeks of tirzepatide treatment.

Results: Developed images revealed clear excess adiposity and high health-risk (BRI) at baseline with marked improvements, although not to within the healthy BMI (<25 kg/m²) and BRI ranges at 72 weeks, observations not evident in the published report. Avatar analyses revealed sexual dimorphism in regional shape (volume) changes with weight loss.

Conclusions: Visual presentation of new weight loss medicine trial results can supplement standard published reports by condensing substantial amounts of complex technical information in an easily understood format that can potentially yield new study insights.