Research
Hormonal
The cardiometabolic benefits of semaglutide 2.4 mg are not maintained after treatment discontinuation, with risk factors deteriorating towards baseline levels.
If you stop taking semaglutide 2.4 mg, the improvements in your blood pressure, blood sugar, and cholesterol will likely reverse towards your pre-treatment levels. This suggests that obesity management with this medication requires long-term, continuous use.
WeakRefutesVERY_HIGH confidence
In STEP 4, improvements in waist circumference, SBP, FPG, fasting serum insulin and lipids during the semaglutide run-in (week 0-20) were maintained over week 20-68 with continued semaglutide, but deteriorated following the switch to placebo (p < .001 [week 20-68]).
Why this rating
Based on the randomized withdrawal phase of STEP 4, a robust trial design.
Source
Semaglutide improves cardiometabolic risk factors in adults with overweight or obesity: <scp>STEP</scp> 1 and 4 exploratory analyses
Mikhail Kosiborod et al. · Diabetes Obesity and Metabolism · 2022
DOI 10.1111/dom.14890
rct · n=2764Cited 107×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
Related findings · Hormonal
- Initial treatment for type 2 diabetes should be a combination of metformin and either an SGLT-2 inhibitor or a GLP-1 receptor agonist to achieve cardiorenal protection, rather than monotherapy or older agents like sulfonylureas.Strong
- For patients with specific monogenic obesity syndromes (leptin deficiency, POMC/PCSK1/LEPR mutations), targeted pharmacotherapy (recombinant leptin or setmelanotide) is highly effective and should be prioritized, unlike in polygenic obesity.Strong
- Continued weekly administration of 2.4 mg subcutaneous semaglutide prevents weight regain and promotes further weight loss in adults with overweight or obesity, whereas switching to placebo results in significant weight regain.Strong
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