ITALY — The SUPPRESS-EARLY trial presented its 2-year results at the American Diabetes Association annual meeting. The study compared tirzepatide plus metformin against conventional intensive treatment plus metformin.

"Participants in the study started with a baseline A1C of 7.8%," the trial data showed. In the conventionally intensive treatment group, the average A1C decreased to 6.3%. Stefano Del Prato, MD, an investigator from the University of Pisa in Italy, said, "The final level of A1C at the end of the second year was 5.6%, which is on average below the upper limit of the normal range for A1C, 5.7%."

Del Prato said, "It was around three times more people achieving an A1C of 5.7%, in the range of around 65%, as compared to 28% with people on a conventional optimized treatment." He added, "Both body weight and waist circumference went much lower with tirzepatide compared to the conventional treatment."

Regarding other metrics, Del Prato stated, "Tirzepatide also was associated with an improvement in the lipid profile, in particular with the LDL, triglycerides, and the triglyceride concentration and non-HDL cholesterol, and also with a statistically significantly lower systolic blood pressure with a numerical reduction in the diastolic blood pressure." In the control group, 10% of participants received two drugs in addition to metformin.

Del Prato clarified the medication usage within the study arms. "What happened is that in the tirzepatide-treated arm, 85% of the population at the end of the second year was on the maximum dose of tirzepatide 15 mg," he said. Regarding the comparison group, he said, "In the population that had been treated with the intensive conventional approach, 85% of them ended up to have, on top of metformin, a GLP-1 receptor agonist, mainly represented by subcutaneous semaglutide, 60+%, another 15% on oral semaglutide, and the remaining on dulaglutide."