Weight-loss drug found to shrink muscle in mice, human cells

That's the sort of headlines that smells like bullshit to me.

My understand of those drugs is that they don't actually make you lose weight, they just cut your appetite so you can follow a diet to lose weight without hunger hammering at the door. So to start with, if that's the case, all they are observing is the effect of a diet. Not sure the diet drug has much to do with it.

Then I went from 133kg to 88kg with these diet drugs. Even though I exercised every day, I am sure I also lost some muscle mass as well, just because I don't have to carry 45kg every time I make a move anymore. Seems logical and would probably be concerned if it was any other way.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2452302X2...

This study on mice was suggested by a previous publication:

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/landia/article/PIIS2213-8...

where it had been noticed that in humans "the muscle loss with these medications (as indicated by decreases in fat-free mass [FFM]) ranges from 25% to 39% of the total weight lost over 36–72 weeks", in comparison with muscle loss of only 10% to 30% when the weight is lost just by eating less, without semaglutide.

So with semaglutide, a larger fraction of the weight loss affects muscles than when the same weight is lost by traditional means.

While for other muscles the loss of mass may not be so important, the fact that at least in mice the loss also affects the heart is worrisome and it certainly warrants further studies.