The effectiveness and sustainability of health outcomes from a holistic digital weight-loss service with concomitant initiation of tirzepatide: A pragmatic randomized controlled trial in the UK.

AIM

To measure the effectiveness and sustainability of the Juniper UK digital weight-loss service (DWLS), which delivers 6 months of personalized, proactive lifestyle coaching supplemented with tirzepatide to patients through a multidisciplinary team (MDT).

METHODS

An observer-blinded randomized controlled trial (RCT) will be conducted on a cohort of non-diabetic patients of the Juniper DWLS in the UK. Participants in both the intervention and control groups will receive weekly subcutaneous injections of 2.5 mg tirzepatide for 4 weeks, uptitrating the dose to 5.0 mg from weeks 5 to 8, and by 2.5 mg every 4 weeks until reaching 15 mg in week 21, which they will maintain until the end of the intervention period at 6 months, when participants will be taken off the medication. The intervention group will receive personalized weeklylifestyle coaching with a focus on protein intake and resistance training for 6 months. Participants in the control group will attend a diet and exercise group counselling session at programme inception and will be sent a summary of the session's content at months 2 and 4. Aside from these events, health coaches will only interact with control group participants on a reactive basis. From month 6 to month 12, participants from both groups will no longer have access to their MDTs. The trial's co-primary endpoints include weight loss, fat-free to fat-mass ratio and composite strength measures at 12 months (6 months following the end of treatment), compared with baseline. Secondary endpoints include percentage change in weight, fat-free to fat-mass ratio, and composite strength from baseline to 6 months, side effect incidence, and change in cardiometabolic risk factors at 12 months. Quality of life and programme engagement represent the study's exploratory endpoints.

RESULTS

A total of 688 participants enrolled in the study, with a mean age of 44.6 (± 11.4) years and a mean body mass index of 34.8 (± 7.5) kg/m; 81.0% of participants are women, and 72.8% are of White ethnicity. More than three-quarters of participants have at least one co-morbidity, with dyslipidaemia (42.4%), hypertension (35.3%) and high cholesterol (31.8%) being the most prevalent conditions.

CONCLUSIONS

This RCT will be the first to assess the effectiveness and sustainability of a real-world intensive, multidisciplinary DWLS, and it should highlight the potential of such a service for long-term obesity treatment compared with programmes that deliver standard health counselling.