In brief
The head-to-head trial of tirzepatide against semaglutide in type 2 diabetes. Patients with a mean HbA1c of 8.28 percent, mean age 56.6 and mean weight 93.7 kilograms were assigned to weekly tirzepatide at 5, 10 or 15 milligrams or to semaglutide at 1 milligram for 40 weeks. HbA1c fell by 2.01, 2.24 and 2.30 percentage points on the three tirzepatide doses against 1.86 on semaglutide, so every tirzepatide dose was non-inferior and superior on the primary endpoint. Weight loss was also greater with tirzepatide. Severe hypoglycaemia was rare in all groups; serious adverse events occurred in 5 to 7 percent of tirzepatide patients and 3 percent of semaglutide patients. The trial was funded by Eli Lilly.
Study design
SURPASS-2: open-label, 40-week phase-3 trial, 1,879 patients with type 2 diabetes randomised to tirzepatide at three doses or semaglutide 1 mg once weekly.
What it does not show
Open-label, so patients and clinicians knew the treatment, and the comparator was semaglutide 1 mg rather than the higher dose later used for obesity. Sponsor-funded, in diabetes, with pharmaceutical products.
A clinical trial tests a pharmaceutical form of a compound, in a defined patient group, under medical supervision, with a defined endpoint. None of that transfers to a research-grade vial, and this page does not suggest it does.
Where this paper is cited
- Tirzepatide — SURPASS-2, 40 weeks head-to-head with semaglutide 1 mg: larger HbA1c and weight reductions at all three tirzepatide doses.
Other papers cited for Tirzepatide
- Study in humans Tirzepatide once weekly for the treatment of obesity in people with type 2 diabetes (SURMOUNT-2): a double-blind, randomised, multicentre, placebo-controlled, phase 3 trial Garvey et al. (2023), Lancet
- Study in humans LY3298176, a novel dual GIP and GLP-1 receptor agonist for the treatment of type 2 diabetes mellitus: From discovery to clinical proof of concept Coskun et al. (2018), Mol Metab
Further reading
- Research library: every paper cited on this site, by compound and by study type.
- GLP-1 family comparison
- How to read a certificate of analysis
- Lyophilised peptide storage and stability
How this page was made: the citation was retrieved from PubMed by PMID and checked against the title on the product page; the summary was written from the paper's abstract and reports only what the abstract reports. Read the paper itself before relying on any figure here.