A new study reveals that weight loss medication leads to reductions in blood pressure levels during both day and night.
Recent research published in Hypertension, a journal of the American Heart Association, reveals that tirzepatide, a new weight loss drug, substantially reduced systolic blood pressure (the upper figure in a blood pressure measurement) in approximately 500 obese adults over a period of roughly eight months.
Systolic blood pressure, or the top number in the blood pressure reading, is a stronger predictor for cardiovascular death than diastolic, or bottom number, blood pressure. According to the American Heart Association’s 2024 Heart Disease and Stroke Statistics, more than 122 million adults in the United States, or 47% of adults have hypertension, and nearly 42% of adults have obesity.
How Tirzepatide Works
Tirzepatide works by mimicking two metabolic hormones in the body: it acts as a glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonist and also as a glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide (GIP) receptor agonist. These hormones stimulate 2017 ACC/AHA Guideline for the Prevention, Detection, Evaluation, and Management of High Blood Pressure in Adults classifies hypertension, or high blood pressure, as having top and bottom blood pressure measures greater than or equal to 130/80 mm Hg.
Study limitations include that it was only conducted in a subset of the original 2,539 SURMOUNT-1 participants; the ambulatory blood pressure monitoring was only measured at two points in the study — baseline and at 36 weeks; and measurements were only taken once per hour at night to minimize the burden on study participants. In addition, changes in food intake and 24-hour urine sodium excretion were not assessed, meaning the contribution of dietary modifications including salt intake or other changes that may help to reduce blood pressure are unknown and cannot be estimated.
“Overall, these data are encouraging that novel weight-loss medications are effective at reducing body weight and they are also effective at improving many of the cardiometabolic complications of obesity including hypertension, Type 2 diabetes, and dyslipidemia, among others. While the impact of each of these beneficial effects is individually important, many of these obesity-related complications act synergistically to increase the risk of weight-loss strategies for prevention and treatment of hypertension and chair of the department of medicine at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson, Mississippi.
“Additional studies will be necessary to determine the long-term impact on cardiovascular events such as heart attack and heart failure. Also, studies are needed to investigate what happens to blood pressure when medications like tirzepatide are discontinued – does the blood pressure rebound and go back up, or does it remain lowered?” Hall concluded.
Reference: “Tirzepatide Reduces 24-Hour Ambulatory Blood Pressure in Adults With Body Mass Index ≥27 kg/m2: SURMOUNT-1 Ambulatory Blood Pressure Monitoring Substudy” by James A. de Lemos, Bruno Linetzky, Carel W. le Roux, Luke J. Laffin, Wanpen Vongpatanasin, Ludi Fan, Andrea Hemmingway, Nadia N. Ahmad, Mathijs C. Bunck and Adam Stefanski, 5 February 2024, Hypertension.
DOI: 10.1161/HYPERTENSIONAHA.123.22022
The study was funded by Eli Lilly and Company, the manufacturer of tirzepatide.