There is large-enough consensus on this drug for its main use cases (treating diabetes and obesity), but more importantly for this conversation: it's actually quite common for drugs to get new indications after their initial one --- at which point, there might be a new, broader consensus on what the drug is good for.
Clinical trials are designed to treat a very specific subclass of individuals; pharmaceutical companies very carefully choose that subclass in an attempt to help ensure the clinical trials are successful, which is a combination of the following:
- Positive, statistically-significant results.
- FDA approval with those results.
- Insurance companies willing to pay for the given treatment.
- A decent-sized addressable market.
Examples of drugs/medical technologies later getting other indications:
- Minoxidil was a drug that only later got its approval to be used as a hair loss treatment; there are currently clinical trials for a more "advanced" minoxidil oral pill for this use case.
- Re: GLP-1s: Tirzepatide later got an indication that it effectively treats sleep apnea. There are very many other clinical trials ongoing for GLP-1s, but perhaps most recently, Semaglutide (ozempic) failed to show statistical significance as a treatment for Alzheimer's.
- The Galleri blood screening/test. The initial indication they are going for is folk who are at highest risk for cancer (I believe that's individuals between the ages of 50 and 70); however, that's not to say it would be bad for individuals younger or older. But, this is a way to help ensure the earliest product has a successful outcome.
These are ones I know off the top of my head, but I suspect an LLM can give several more examples.
I was going to comment that "tirzerpatide study for apnea is bullshit because it's just weight loss which causes apnea so naturally it works just like any other method of weight loss would" but apparently NOT, and it helps, somehow, beyond the effect that a simple weight loss of the same magnitude would have!
>pharmaceutical companies very carefully choose that subclass in an attempt to help ensure the clinical trials are successful
You mean that they mainly choose middle class white males with degrees? It's not some racism, it's just an observation (which one may call a clinical meta-study of a sort), that this is the group that follows doctor's advice best of all thus making results the least noisy. Which in turns makes trials many times cheaper because doing otherwise would have required much larger patient groups to compensate for higher noise.
Going beyond that will be many *-isms at once, but google it up.
This is a major factor impacting quality of drugs. For instance, GLP-1 itself should be probably prescribed to Blacks starting with lower threshold BMI because they appear to benefit more from it in 27-30 BMI range, and are more susceptible to weight-related health issues than whites in these "overweight" ranges, and more likely to develop diabetes from it, and overall. Doing so would have increased overall society's benefits from GLP-1 a lot. But no one knows for sure because clinical trials almost didn't include them.
It really doesn’t, at all. Every sentence has a clear, non-equivocative meaning and it doesn’t use any LLM tropes. Your LLM sensor is seriously faulty.
I didn't get any LLM vibes from the comment at all. I'd heard of "off label use" and other incidental use-cases. So the comment makes a lot of sense...
Clinical trials are designed to treat a very specific subclass of individuals; pharmaceutical companies very carefully choose that subclass in an attempt to help ensure the clinical trials are successful, which is a combination of the following:
- Positive, statistically-significant results. - FDA approval with those results. - Insurance companies willing to pay for the given treatment. - A decent-sized addressable market.
Examples of drugs/medical technologies later getting other indications: - Minoxidil was a drug that only later got its approval to be used as a hair loss treatment; there are currently clinical trials for a more "advanced" minoxidil oral pill for this use case. - Re: GLP-1s: Tirzepatide later got an indication that it effectively treats sleep apnea. There are very many other clinical trials ongoing for GLP-1s, but perhaps most recently, Semaglutide (ozempic) failed to show statistical significance as a treatment for Alzheimer's. - The Galleri blood screening/test. The initial indication they are going for is folk who are at highest risk for cancer (I believe that's individuals between the ages of 50 and 70); however, that's not to say it would be bad for individuals younger or older. But, this is a way to help ensure the earliest product has a successful outcome.
These are ones I know off the top of my head, but I suspect an LLM can give several more examples.