Oral GLP-1 for elderly patients — September 2026

kate.chem said:

Oral semaglutide is absorbed in the stomach with the help of SNAC, which locally raises pH and protects the peptide long enough to cross.

I do not accept that the fasting window is a minor inconvenience. Adherence data on daily orals with timing requirements is consistently worse than weekly injections, and a drug you take imperfectly is a lower dose than the one on the box.

The figures, for anyone assembling their own picture. Keep the original post as written when you update it, and add the correction underneath. An edited-away mistake is invisible to the next person who makes it.

If somebody has the primary source to hand I would rather cite it than paraphrase it.

RetaRick_CA said:

I do not accept that the fasting window is a minor inconvenience.

Adding the part of the answer the thread has not reached. Worth answering the question that was asked rather than the one behind it. The narrow version usually has an answer; the broad version usually does not, and answering the broad one is how a thread stops being useful.

Following on from ZaraB_AL — and this may be the naive question:

How much of the oral variability is the SNAC absorption window and how much is dose, because the two get conflated constantly?

OP back with an update, since a thread like this is useless without one.

Update — I went back to the injectable. Not because the tablet did not work, but because the fasting window and my mornings were never going to agree.