Research

Hormonal

In patients with Class 3 obesity and Type 2 Diabetes, switching to weight-neutral or weight-losing diabetes medications (SGLT-2 inhibitors, GLP-1 agonists, DPP-4 inhibitors) during a multidisciplinary weight management program results in significantly greater weight loss compared to switching to weight-gaining medications (sulphonylureas, insulin).

If you have severe obesity (BMI 40+) and Type 2 Diabetes, ask your doctor about switching your diabetes medications to 'weight-neutral' or 'weight-losing' types (like SGLT-2 inhibitors or GLP-1 agonists) instead of older 'weight-gaining' ones (like insulin or sulphonylureas). In this program, patients who made this switch lost nearly 8% of their body weight in 6 months, compared to only 2.4% for those who switched to weight-gaining drugs. This change also helped reduce their overall diabetes medication load and improved blood sugar control.

ModerateSupportsMEDIUM confidence
T2DM patients who started on weigh-neutral/losing medications in the program lost more weight than those started on weight-gaining medications (7:7 ± 5:3% vs. 2:4 ± 3:8%, p = 0:015).
David Medveczky et al. · Journal of Diabetes Research · 2020

Why this rating

Observational cohort study with real-world data; lacks randomization for medication assignment but uses rigorous statistical controls and clear outcome measures.

Source

Class 3 Obesity in a Multidisciplinary Metabolic Weight Management Program: The Effect of Preexisting Type 2 Diabetes on 6-Month Weight Loss

David Medveczky et al. · Journal of Diabetes Research · 2020

DOI 10.1155/2020/9327910

cohort · n=180Cited 19×
Read the paper
DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

This is one finding among thousands. Every one is graded and traced to its source, so you can see what the evidence actually supports. Browse the research →