Retatrutide

Retatrutide at a Glance

Retatrutide goes a step further than tirzepatide by adding a third target: it activates GLP-1, GIP and glucagon receptors together. Including glucagon is counterintuitive, since glucagon raises blood sugar — but it also increases energy expenditure, and in combination the net effect in phase 2 trials was the largest weight reduction reported for any pharmacological agent. It is investigational, in phase 3, and not approved anywhere; everything known about it comes from trials still in progress.

History & Development

Retatrutide is the third step in an escalation: one receptor, then two, then three. Each addition has produced more weight loss than the last, and this one produced the largest figures reported for any pharmacological agent.

First described	Phase 2 obesity results published in the New England Journal of Medicine, 2023, as LY3437943 17Reference 17Jastreboff et al. · 2023Triple-hormone-receptor agonist retatrutide for obesity - a phase 2 trialView study →
Discovered / synthesised by	Eli Lilly and Company research programme 17,18Reference 17Jastreboff et al. · 2023Triple-hormone-receptor agonist retatrutide for obesity - a phase 2 trialView study →Reference 18ClinicalTrials.govRetatrutide (LY3437943) trial programme, sponsor Eli Lilly and Company - including NCT05882045 (obesity with cardiovascular disease)View study →
Institution	Eli Lilly and Company
Origin	De-novo synthetic peptide; triple agonist at the GLP-1, GIP and glucagon receptors
Key patent	Not established in the sources consulted for this section
Assignee	Eli Lilly and Company
Development status	Investigational - phase 3 (TRIUMPH programme); not approved anywhere 18Reference 18ClinicalTrials.govRetatrutide (LY3437943) trial programme, sponsor Eli Lilly and Company - including NCT05882045 (obesity with cardiovascular disease)View study →

Discovery

The logic follows directly from tirzepatide. If adding GIP to GLP-1 outperformed GLP-1 alone, the question was whether a third receptor would add more. Retatrutide answers it by combining GLP-1, GIP and glucagon agonism in a single molecule.

Glucagon is the interesting inclusion and the same one survodutide makes: it raises blood glucose on its own, but it also increases energy expenditure, so pairing it with two incretin agonists is intended to net out favourably while adding a mechanism the others lack - burning more rather than only eating less.

The phase 2 obesity results were published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2023 under the code LY3437943 ^{17Reference 17Jastreboff et al. · 2023Triple-hormone-receptor agonist retatrutide for obesity - a phase 2 trialView study →}, and the magnitude of weight reduction reported there is what moved the compound to the front of the field.

Development & ownership

Retatrutide has been developed entirely within Eli Lilly, with no licensing or origination partner - unlike survodutide, and the same in-house pattern as tirzepatide.

It is in phase 3 under the TRIUMPH programme, with trials spanning obesity, type 2 diabetes, obesity with established cardiovascular disease, and renal function in overweight or obese participants with chronic kidney disease ^{18Reference 18ClinicalTrials.govRetatrutide (LY3437943) trial programme, sponsor Eli Lilly and Company - including NCT05882045 (obesity with cardiovascular disease)View study →}. Lilly has also opened pre-approval expanded access.

One safety signal from phase 2 belongs in the development record rather than only in the safety section: a dose-dependent rise in heart rate, peaking at around 24 weeks. The cardiovascular outcome question is open, and the phase 3 programme is where it gets answered.

It is not approved by the FDA, the EMA or any other regulator, for any indication, anywhere.

How it reached the market

It has not. Retatrutide is investigational and legitimately available only through clinical trials. It is nonetheless already sold in grey-market peptide channels on the strength of its phase 2 numbers - a compound whose cardiovascular safety is still being formally assessed, supplied with no oversight of dose, purity or monitoring.

What It's Used For

Retatrutide (LY3437943) is an investigational drug. It is not approved by the FDA, the EMA, or any other regulator, for any indication, anywhere in the world — and that status, not the weight-loss numbers, is the first thing to understand about it. It is Eli Lilly’s triple receptor agonist: a once-weekly injectable synthetic peptide that activates the GLP-1 and GIP incretin receptors and, unusually, the glucagon receptor. The glucagon arm is the design bet — it is intended to raise energy expenditure on top of the appetite suppression the incretins already deliver, which is the mechanistic story behind the headline phase 2 figure of roughly −24% body weight at 48 weeks ^{1Reference 1Jastreboff AM et al. · 2023RCTTriple-Hormone-Receptor Agonist Retatrutide for Obesity — A Phase 2 Trial — human (RCT, phase 2)View study →}.

That figure is real, and it is genuine randomized human evidence — this is a late-stage pharmaceutical program with a full phase 1–3 register, not a peptide-forum experiment resting on rodent data. But it is phase 2, in 338 people, over 48 weeks. As of this check the only phase 3 result that has actually read out and been published is a diabetes monotherapy trial (TRANSCEND-T2D-1) ^{3Reference 3Bajaj HS et al. · 2026RCTEfficacy and safety of retatrutide, a GIP, GLP-1, and glucagon receptor agonist, in people with type 2 diabetes inadequately controlled with diet and exercise (TRANSCEND-T2D-1) — human (RCT, phase 3)View study →}.

The phase 3 weight-management program (TRIUMPH) has trials that are completed but unreported — no results posted, no publication — and the cardiovascular-outcomes and MASH trials run to 2029 and 2030. A completed trial is not a result, and a spectacular phase 2 result from a well-known sponsor is not an approval.

Route is load-bearing as always: this is a subcutaneous injection, once weekly, oral-inactive. And because there is no approved product, there is no legitimate supply route for an individual outside a clinical trial — every vial sold as “retatrutide” is by definition unregulated research-chemical material of unverified identity. See Sourcing, Route & Legal Status; it is the most decision-relevant section here.

Evidence by IndicationStrength of support · Beta

Support is an experimental score I’m building — a composite weighted by study type (human > animal > in vitro > review) and study volume. It’s a beta: a fast way to rank strength of evidence at a glance, not a validated metric. Each application links down to its write-up. Note that no score here can exceed the ceiling imposed by the compound being unapproved with phase 3 outcome data largely unread out.

01Type 2 diabetesPromising70%Phase 2 RCT (n=281) + one published phase 3 monotherapy trial (n=537). Unapproved ^{2,3Reference 2Rosenstock J et al. · 2023RCTRetatrutide, a GIP, GLP-1 and glucagon receptor agonist, for people with type 2 diabetes: a randomised, double-blind, placebo- and active-controlled, phase 2 trial — human (RCT, phase 2)View study →Reference 3Bajaj HS et al. · 2026RCTEfficacy and safety of retatrutide, a GIP, GLP-1, and glucagon receptor agonist, in people with type 2 diabetes inadequately controlled with diet and exercise (TRANSCEND-T2D-1) — human (RCT, phase 3)View study →}

02Obesity & weight managementPromising68%One phase 2 RCT (n=338, −24.2% at 48 wk) + network meta-analysis. Phase 3 completed but unreported ^{1,5,9Reference 1Jastreboff AM et al. · 2023RCTTriple-Hormone-Receptor Agonist Retatrutide for Obesity — A Phase 2 Trial — human (RCT, phase 2)View study →Reference 5Sinha B et al. · 2025Meta-analysisEfficacy and Safety of GLP-1 Receptor Agonists, Dual Agonists, and Retatrutide for Weight Loss in Adults With Obesity: A Bayesian Network Meta-Analysis — human (network meta-analysis)View study →Reference 9Giblin K et al. · 2026Retatrutide for the treatment of obesity, obstructive sleep apnea and knee osteoarthritis: Rationale and design of the TRIUMPH registrational trials — trial design paper (no efficacy results)View study →}

03MASLD / hepatic steatosisPromising55%Phase 2a substudy (n=98), liver-fat imaging endpoint; no biopsy outcome, phase 3 runs to 2030 ^{4Reference 4Sanyal AJ et al. · 2024RCTTriple hormone receptor agonist retatrutide for metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease: a randomized phase 2a trial — human (RCT, phase 2a substudy)View study →}

04Cardiometabolic risk factorsPromising46%Post-hoc trial substudies (lipids, albuminuria) + class-level meta-analysis. No CV-outcome data ^{6,7,8,15Reference 6Wen Y et al. · 2025Decreases in circulating ANGPTL3/8 concentrations following retatrutide treatment parallel reductions in serum lipids — human (post-hoc analysis of phase 2 trials)View study →Reference 7Heerspink HJL et al. · 2025The Effect of Retatrutide on Kidney Parameters in Participants With Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus and/or Obesity — human (post-hoc analysis)View study →Reference 8Basile C et al. · 2026Meta-analysisEffect of incretin-based therapies on blood pressure: a systematic review and meta-analysis — human (systematic review / meta-analysis, class-level)View study →Reference 15Pearson MJ et al. · 2026Retatrutide and Lipid and Metabolite Profiles in Participants With Obesity With or Without Type 2 Diabetes — human (trial analysis)View study →}

05Knee osteoarthritisShaky30%Phase 3 TRIUMPH-4 completed, no results posted. Design + weight-loss rationale only ^{9Reference 9Giblin K et al. · 2026Retatrutide for the treatment of obesity, obstructive sleep apnea and knee osteoarthritis: Rationale and design of the TRIUMPH registrational trials — trial design paper (no efficacy results)View study →}

06Obstructive sleep apneaShaky26%Phase 3 TRIUMPH-1 sub-protocol, no results posted. Design + class inference only ^{9Reference 9Giblin K et al. · 2026Retatrutide for the treatment of obesity, obstructive sleep apnea and knee osteoarthritis: Rationale and design of the TRIUMPH registrational trials — trial design paper (no efficacy results)View study →}

Mechanisms

Pharmacokinetics

Route is load-bearing. Retatrutide is given by once-weekly subcutaneous injection. Like other therapeutic peptides of this size it has negligible oral bioavailability — it is digested rather than absorbed — so any “oral retatrutide” product is pharmacologically inert regardless of what the label claims. There is no formulated oral version in development analogous to semaglutide’s SNAC tablet.

Phase 1 single- and multiple-ascending-dose studies showed dose-proportional pharmacokinetics with a mean half-life of approximately six days, which is what supports the weekly schedule; a single dose produced measurable weight loss persisting to about day 43 ^{10,11,12Reference 10Coskun T et al. · 2022AnimalLY3437943, a novel triple glucagon, GIP, and GLP-1 receptor agonist for glycemic control and weight loss: From discovery to clinical proof of concept — animal (mouse) + human (phase 1)View study →Reference 11Urva S et al. · 2022RCTLY3437943, a novel triple GIP, GLP-1, and glucagon receptor agonist in people with type 2 diabetes: a phase 1b multiple-ascending dose trial — human (RCT, phase 1b)View study →Reference 12Tetelbaun L et al. · 2024ReviewThe First Triple Agonist for Antiobesity: Retatrutide — reviewView study →}. That long half-life comes from fatty-acid acylation promoting albumin binding — the same structural strategy used across the GLP-1 analogue class — rather than from anything unique to the triple-agonist design.

Trial dosing is titrated upward from a low starting dose (2 mg in the phase 2 obesity trial) to maintenance doses of 4–12 mg weekly, specifically to limit gastrointestinal intolerance. The titration is not a formality; it is the mitigation for the dose-limiting adverse effect. Reconstitution and stability parameters for lyophilized gray-market powder are not independently documented anywhere, because no such product is a characterized pharmaceutical.

Clinical & regulatory status

Retatrutide is an investigational drug with no marketing approval anywhere in the world as of this check — not approved by the FDA, EMA, TGA or PMDA, not a prescription medicine, and not a dietary supplement. It is Eli Lilly’s proprietary candidate (development code LY3437943). The registered program is large: a ClinicalTrials.gov search of the retatrutide record set returns roughly 33 studies — about 14 phase 1, 4 phase 2 and 14 phase 3 — spanning obesity, type 2 diabetes, MASH, cardiovascular and kidney outcomes, chronic kidney disease, knee osteoarthritis and obstructive sleep apnea, plus one pre-approval expanded-access record (NCT07629401) which is the only route to legal access outside a trial and is not a general availability mechanism.

The temporal picture is the important part. Completed does not mean reported: TRANSCEND-T2D-1 (NCT06354660) is completed and published ^{3Reference 3Bajaj HS et al. · 2026RCTEfficacy and safety of retatrutide, a GIP, GLP-1, and glucagon receptor agonist, in people with type 2 diabetes inadequately controlled with diet and exercise (TRANSCEND-T2D-1) — human (RCT, phase 3)View study →}, but TRIUMPH-1 (NCT05929066) and TRIUMPH-4 (NCT05931367) are completed with no posted results and no located publication, and the large outcome trials — cardiovascular/kidney (NCT06383390, ~10,000 participants, projected 2029) and MASH (NCT07165028, projected 2030) — are years from answering. No trial in the set was listed as terminated.

Trial counts from the ClinicalTrials.gov “retatrutide” record set, plus one expanded-access record. Last checked: July 2026.

Sourcing, Route & Legal Status

Regulatory status — read this before anything else on the page. Retatrutide has no marketing approval in any jurisdiction. It is not FDA-approved, not EMA-approved, not TGA- or PMDA-approved, not a prescription drug, and not a dietary supplement. There is no label, no approved indication, no approved dose, and no pharmacy that can lawfully dispense it. The only lawful way for a person to receive retatrutide is as a participant in a registered clinical trial, or through the single pre-approval expanded-access record (NCT07629401), which is a narrow physician-initiated mechanism for specific patients — not a supply channel.

This means there is no legitimate source, and that is the spine of this section. Because no approved product exists, there is no diverted-pharmaceutical channel, no compounded-from-approved-drug channel, and no counterfeit-of-a-real-product channel of the kind that complicates semaglutide. Every single vial sold as “retatrutide” to a member of the public is, by definition, unregulated research-chemical material — synthesized by an unaccountable manufacturer, labeled “for research use only / not for human consumption,” and never subject to any regulatory or pharmacopoeial standard. There is no version of buying retatrutide online that is the trial drug.

Retatrutide is currently among the most heavily counterfeited compounds on the gray peptide market, and the reason is structural rather than incidental: the phase 2 weight-loss number is the most spectacular in the field, the sponsor is a household name, and — unlike semaglutide or tirzepatide — there is no legitimate product for a buyer to compare against, no reference pen, no known appearance, no authorized price, and no pharmacist in the loop. A buyer has no way at all to tell genuine LY3437943 from a cheaper GLP-1 peptide, a partially degraded batch, an underfilled vial, or plain mannitol. Substitution is undetectable to the user, and the plausible substitutions include compounds with entirely different dose-response and safety profiles.

How it is supplied (in trials, and on the gray market). In trials retatrutide is a subcutaneous injection given once weekly, titrated upward from a low starting dose under supervision. Gray-market material is typically sold as a lyophilized powder requiring reconstitution with bacteriostatic water, transferring to the buyer the sterile handling, concentration arithmetic and dose measurement that a clinical trial supply chain is built to remove. Non-sterile reconstitution adds infection and endotoxin risk on top of the identity risk; dosing-error risk is amplified because the therapeutic range is in single-digit milligrams and the compound is potent.

Third-party certificates of analysis are not a solution. A COA supplied by, or arranged by, the seller is unverifiable, and identity testing that shows “a peptide” is not identity testing that shows this peptide at this purity with acceptable endotoxin. A 2026 BMJ fact-check examined a reported death associated with an unapproved weight-loss “jab” ^{16Reference 16Mahase E · 2026Retatrutide fact check: Has a man died after taking the unapproved weight loss jab? — news / analysis (not a study)View study →} — the specific attribution there is contested, which is the point of the piece, but it illustrates the underlying reality: self-sourced use is not the studied drug under studied conditions, and when something goes wrong there is no batch to recall and no manufacturer to hold accountable.

This page does not recommend, review, rank, or link vendors, and no request will change that. Every efficacy figure here belongs to pharmaceutical-grade LY3437943 administered inside a monitored clinical trial. None of it transfers to a vial of unknown provenance.

Safety

Retatrutide is an investigational drug with trial-grade human safety data and nothing else — no approval, no post-marketing surveillance, and a longest published exposure of about 48 weeks. The distinctive open question is a dose-dependent rise in heart rate, which a 10,000-participant cardiovascular outcomes trial is now testing and will not answer before 2029.

Safety at a Glance

⚠️ Moderate toxicityCardiac cautionDrug interactions

• Dose-dependent heart-rate increase. Peaked around 24 weeks in the phase 2 obesity trial — an unresolved cardiovascular question, not a reassurance.
• Contraindicated in pregnancy and breastfeeding by default. No reproductive data exist — see the box below.
• Highest adverse-event burden of the incretin class. Class-leading efficacy came with the sharpest side-effect profile in a network meta-analysis.
• Gastrointestinal intolerance is dose-limiting. Nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and constipation drive the mandatory slow titration.
• No comprehensive interaction profile. Class-based expectations only — oral drug absorption, hypoglycemia with insulin, peri-procedural aspiration.
• Gray-market vials carry risks absent from every trial figure. Unverified identity, non-sterile reconstitution, dosing error.

Full Safety & Interactions Detail

Overall posture. Retatrutide’s human safety data are trial data — real and reasonably substantial for a phase 2/early phase 3 asset, and simultaneously far short of what regulatory approval requires. The longest published exposure is about 48 weeks. There is no post-marketing pharmacovigilance for the obvious reason that there is no market.

Adverse effects (from human trials). The most common adverse events across phase 1–3 studies are gastrointestinal and dose-related — nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, constipation — mostly mild to moderate and substantially mitigated by slow upward titration ^{1,2,3Reference 1Jastreboff AM et al. · 2023RCTTriple-Hormone-Receptor Agonist Retatrutide for Obesity — A Phase 2 Trial — human (RCT, phase 2)View study →Reference 2Rosenstock J et al. · 2023RCTRetatrutide, a GIP, GLP-1 and glucagon receptor agonist, for people with type 2 diabetes: a randomised, double-blind, placebo- and active-controlled, phase 2 trial — human (RCT, phase 2)View study →Reference 3Bajaj HS et al. · 2026RCTEfficacy and safety of retatrutide, a GIP, GLP-1, and glucagon receptor agonist, in people with type 2 diabetes inadequately controlled with diet and exercise (TRANSCEND-T2D-1) — human (RCT, phase 3)View study →}. This is the class signature, but with a sharper edge: in a network meta-analysis of the incretin class, retatrutide’s class-leading efficacy came with the highest adverse-event burden of the agents compared ^{5Reference 5Sinha B et al. · 2025Meta-analysisEfficacy and Safety of GLP-1 Receptor Agonists, Dual Agonists, and Retatrutide for Weight Loss in Adults With Obesity: A Bayesian Network Meta-Analysis — human (network meta-analysis)View study →}.

The heart-rate signal is the distinctive one. The phase 2 obesity trial reported a dose-dependent increase in heart rate that peaked at around 24 weeks before partially attenuating ^{1Reference 1Jastreboff AM et al. · 2023RCTTriple-Hormone-Receptor Agonist Retatrutide for Obesity — A Phase 2 Trial — human (RCT, phase 2)View study →}. This is plausibly attributable to the glucagon-receptor component — the very arm that differentiates the drug — and it is the reason a dedicated cardiovascular- and kidney-outcomes trial of roughly 10,000 participants (NCT06383390) is running. Blood pressure, notably, tends to fall with weight loss in this class ^{8Reference 8Basile C et al. · 2026Meta-analysisEffect of incretin-based therapies on blood pressure: a systematic review and meta-analysis — human (systematic review / meta-analysis, class-level)View study →}, so the heart-rate finding cannot be dismissed as a hemodynamic artifact of weight change. This is an unresolved question, not a resolved reassurance, and it will not be resolved before 2029.

Dose-limiting effect. Gastrointestinal intolerance, which is why mandatory upward titration exists. The heart-rate rise is the most notable open cardiovascular question rather than a practical dose limiter in trials.

Interactions. No comprehensive interaction profile is established. A phase 1 drug–drug interaction study has been completed (NCT05445232) but retatrutide-specific interaction data are limited, so the cautions below are mechanism- and class-based expectations, not assessed findings: as an agent that delays gastric emptying it can alter the absorption of concomitant oral medications; combined with insulin or insulin secretagogues it raises hypoglycemia risk; and, by direct analogy with the GLP-1 class, retained gastric contents are a peri-procedural aspiration concern for anesthesia.

Who should avoid it. In practice, everyone outside a clinical trial — there is no supervised way to use it. Within the class-based cautions that a future label would likely carry: personal or family history of medullary thyroid carcinoma or MEN 2, prior pancreatitis, severe gastrointestinal disease, and pregnancy or lactation. These are extrapolated from GLP-1-class labels, not established retatrutide findings.

Injection-specific risks. Injection-site reactions in trials. For self-sourced product, add non-sterile reconstitution (infection, endotoxin), unverified contents (wrong compound, wrong amount), and dosing error from self-mixed concentrations — risks that are absent from every trial figure quoted here.

Scope disclosure (honesty, not a claim):

• Human data? Yes — phase 1, phase 2 and one published phase 3 RCT, in obesity, type 2 diabetes and MASLD. This is trial-grade human evidence, but the drug is unapproved, most phase 3 results are unpublished, and outcome trials run to 2029–2030.
• Interactions assessed? Only partially. One phase 1 DDI study exists; there is no comprehensive profile. The interactions listed above are class/mechanism reasoning.
• Pregnancy/lactation assessed? No. No human or animal reproductive data located for retatrutide specifically.
• Long-term safety established? No. Longest published exposure ~48 weeks. Multi-year safety, and the cardiovascular meaning of the heart-rate signal, are open.
• Does any of this describe gray-market product? No. Every figure above comes from pharmaceutical-grade drug in a monitored trial.

Never imply safety from silence. Where retatrutide has not been studied — long-term use, interactions, pregnancy, and the identity and purity of anything sold outside a trial — the correct statement is “not assessed,” not “safe.”

Pregnancy & Lactation

? Not established in pregnancy? Not established in lactation

Not assessed, and contraindicated by default. There are no human pregnancy or lactation data for retatrutide. Intentional weight loss is generally inappropriate in pregnancy, and the GLP-1 class carries pregnancy cautions with washout recommendations reflecting long half-lives — retatrutide’s ~6-day half-life implies weeks of washout. Note also that weight loss can restore fertility unexpectedly, so unintended pregnancy during use is a realistic scenario. Treat as contraindicated in pregnancy and breastfeeding.

Dosage

There is no approved or established human dose for retatrutide, and none is recommended here. It is an investigational drug with no label, no approved indication, and no lawful self-administration pathway. The figures below are reported as trial data for context only — they are not a protocol, and reproducing them with gray-market material does not reproduce the trial.

In the phase 2 obesity trial, once-weekly subcutaneous retatrutide was titrated upward from 2 mg to maintenance doses of 1, 4, 8 and 12 mg weekly, with weight loss increasing across that range ^{1Reference 1Jastreboff AM et al. · 2023RCTTriple-Hormone-Receptor Agonist Retatrutide for Obesity — A Phase 2 Trial — human (RCT, phase 2)View study →}. The phase 3 diabetes monotherapy trial tested 4, 9 and 12 mg weekly ^{3Reference 3Bajaj HS et al. · 2026RCTEfficacy and safety of retatrutide, a GIP, GLP-1, and glucagon receptor agonist, in people with type 2 diabetes inadequately controlled with diet and exercise (TRANSCEND-T2D-1) — human (RCT, phase 3)View study →}. The titration is the safety mechanism, not an inconvenience: gastrointestinal intolerance is the dose-limiting effect, and starting at or escalating quickly to a maintenance dose is how it becomes severe. Trial participants also received monitoring — including of the heart-rate signal — that self-administration does not include.

Oral products cannot deliver intact peptide (see Pharmacokinetics), so any oral “retatrutide” is inert whatever the label says. And because there is no reference product, dose figures are meaningless when applied to a vial of unverified concentration and unverified identity. This entry is informational only.

References

1. Jastreboff AM, et al. (2023). Triple-Hormone-Receptor Agonist Retatrutide for Obesity — A Phase 2 Trial — human (RCT, phase 2). N Engl J Med. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37366315/
2. Rosenstock J, et al. (2023). Retatrutide, a GIP, GLP-1 and glucagon receptor agonist, for people with type 2 diabetes: a randomised, double-blind, placebo- and active-controlled, phase 2 trial — human (RCT, phase 2). Lancet. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37385280/
3. Bajaj HS, et al. (2026). Efficacy and safety of retatrutide, a GIP, GLP-1, and glucagon receptor agonist, in people with type 2 diabetes inadequately controlled with diet and exercise (TRANSCEND-T2D-1) — human (RCT, phase 3). Lancet. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42250575/
4. Sanyal AJ, et al. (2024). Triple hormone receptor agonist retatrutide for metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease: a randomized phase 2a trial — human (RCT, phase 2a substudy). Nat Med. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38858523/
5. Sinha B, et al. (2025). Efficacy and Safety of GLP-1 Receptor Agonists, Dual Agonists, and Retatrutide for Weight Loss in Adults With Obesity: A Bayesian Network Meta-Analysis — human (network meta-analysis). Obesity (Silver Spring). https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40685589/
6. Wen Y, et al. (2025). Decreases in circulating ANGPTL3/8 concentrations following retatrutide treatment parallel reductions in serum lipids — human (post-hoc analysis of phase 2 trials). Diabetes Obes Metab. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40726454/
7. Heerspink HJL, et al. (2025). The Effect of Retatrutide on Kidney Parameters in Participants With Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus and/or Obesity — human (post-hoc analysis). Kidney Int Rep. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40630318/
8. Basile C, et al. (2026). Effect of incretin-based therapies on blood pressure: a systematic review and meta-analysis — human (systematic review / meta-analysis, class-level). Eur J Prev Cardiol. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40899050/
9. Giblin K, et al. (2026). Retatrutide for the treatment of obesity, obstructive sleep apnea and knee osteoarthritis: Rationale and design of the TRIUMPH registrational trials — trial design paper (no efficacy results). Diabetes Obes Metab. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41090431/
10. Coskun T, et al. (2022). LY3437943, a novel triple glucagon, GIP, and GLP-1 receptor agonist for glycemic control and weight loss: From discovery to clinical proof of concept — animal (mouse) + human (phase 1). Cell Metab. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35985340/
11. Urva S, et al. (2022). LY3437943, a novel triple GIP, GLP-1, and glucagon receptor agonist in people with type 2 diabetes: a phase 1b multiple-ascending dose trial — human (RCT, phase 1b). Lancet. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36354040/
12. Tetelbaun L, et al. (2024). The First Triple Agonist for Antiobesity: Retatrutide — review. Cardiol Rev. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39724554/
13. Coskun T, et al. (2025). Effects of retatrutide on body composition in people with type 2 diabetes: a substudy of a phase 2, double-blind, randomised controlled trial — human (RCT substudy). Lancet Diabetes Endocrinol. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40609566/
14. Heerspink HJL, et al. (2026). Rationale, design and baseline characteristics of the TRANSCEND-CKD trial of retatrutide in patients with chronic kidney disease — trial design paper (no outcome results). Nephrol Dial Transplant. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41160422/
15. Pearson MJ, et al. (2026). Retatrutide and Lipid and Metabolite Profiles in Participants With Obesity With or Without Type 2 Diabetes — human (trial analysis). J Clin Endocrinol Metab. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42135195/
16. Mahase E. (2026). Retatrutide fact check: Has a man died after taking the unapproved weight loss jab? — news / analysis (not a study). BMJ. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42425580/
17. Jastreboff, A. M., Kaplan, L. M., Frias, J. P., et al. (2023). Triple-hormone-receptor agonist retatrutide for obesity - a phase 2 trial. New England Journal of Medicine. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2301972
18. ClinicalTrials.gov. Retatrutide (LY3437943) trial programme, sponsor Eli Lilly and Company - including NCT05882045 (obesity with cardiovascular disease). https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT05882045

View all 18 references▾