Retatrutide and blood pressure — looking for input

pat_auckland said:

I'm 55 years old and want to share my perspective on cardiovascular risk as an older member of this community.

Anti-inflammatory mechanisms of GLP-1 agonists and cardiovascular risk: beyond weight loss, GLP-1R activation directly suppresses NF-κB signaling, reduces NLRP3 inflammasome activation, and decreases monocyte/macrophage adhesion to endothelium[1].

Clinical correlates: hsCRP reduction of 30-60% (consistently seen across trials), reduced carotid intima-media thickness, and decreased coronary plaque inflammation on PET imaging.

These anti-inflammatory effects likely contribute to the cardiovascular benefit seen in SELECT — and may explain benefits beyond what weight loss alone would predict.

anders_CPH said:

Fair, but phase 2 tolerability figures rarely survive contact with phase 3 scale.

Thank you for spelling out the reasoning rather than just the conclusion. Sending this to two other people who asked me the same thing last week.

pat_auckland said:

I'm 55 years old and want to share my perspective on cardiovascular risk as an older member of this community.

I would rather people stopped quoting the 24% as if it were a licensed outcome. It is a phase 2 result in a few hundred participants with no cardiovascular endpoint and no long-term safety data, and this board has a habit of treating pipeline numbers as settled.

AmyNC_wife said:

My reason for being on this is cardiovascular rather than cosmetic, which puts me in a small minority in most of these threads.

AmyNC_wife said:

...we're creating a generation dependent on cardiovascular risk...

I understand the concern, but consider this analogy: are we "creating a generation dependent on" blood pressure medication? Cholesterol medication? Thyroid medication?

Obesity is a chronic disease with biological drivers. Treating it with medication is no different from treating any other chronic condition. The "dependency" framing implies weakness or moral failure — neither of which is accurate.

If ongoing medication is what keeps someone healthy, that's successful treatment, not dependency.

Moderator note: the sourcing question belongs in the vendor section and has been split out. Thread quality here is what the rules are for. Keep it up.