Popular weight loss drug Zepbound has received FDA approval to treat sleep apnea

Many people struggling with sleep apnea will now have a new way to help them sleep more soundly. This month, the Food and Drug Administration expanded approval of Eli Lilly’s obesity drug Zepbound to specifically cover sleep apnea.

On Friday, the FDA officially approved Zepbound as a treatment for moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea in obese adults. In two large-scale clinical trials, the drug successfully helped people lose weight and reduced apnea symptoms. Zepbound is now the first prescription drug of its kind approved for obstructive sleep apnea, a condition that affects about 12 percent of Americans.

apnea it happens when our body temporarily stops breathing during sleep. This causes the brain to wake the person up enough to start breathing again, only to restart the cycle after the person falls back asleep. The more severe a person’s apnea, the more these episodes of stopping or reduced breathing occur at night (although not always related to apnea, snoring is a sign of a narrow airway during sleep). Obstructive sleep apnea, or OSA, is caused by a physical blockage of the airway muscles and is the most common form of apnea.

Although there are several risk factors for OSA, obesity is known to be a particularly important factor for it. The active ingredient in Zepbound, tirzepatide, has been shown to be very effective in treating obesity, with people losing over 20% of their body weight in trials. So Eli Lilly wanted to test whether the drug could also effectively treat apnea.

Across both trialstirzepatide performed as expected, outperforming placebo. People lost between 18% and 20% of their body weight. On average, the drug also reduced the frequency of apnea episodes by up to two-thirds, with participants experiencing about 30 fewer episodes per hour. And up to 50% of people taking tirzepatide were symptom-free after one year.

“Today’s approval marks the first drug treatment option for certain patients with obstructive sleep apnea,” said Sally Seymour, director of the Division of Pulmonology, Allergy, and Intensive Care Medicine at the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, in statement announcing FDA approval. “This is a big step forward for patients with obstructive sleep apnea.”

There are now other highly effective treatments for apnea, most notably continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machines. So CPAP will remain the gold standard for many, especially those with apnea who are not obese. But CPAP machines require daily use at night, which can be too cumbersome for some people to tolerate long-term. In contrast, the weekly injection required to take Zepbound may be much more convenient for some eligible patients. In clinical trials, people taking both Zepbound and CPAP saw even better results than either group—underscoring the potential benefits of combination therapy.

However, Zepbound and similar GLP-1 drugs are not entirely without problems. Their most common side effects include vomiting, diarrhea, and other gastrointestinal symptoms. These drugs don’t come cheap either, with list prices running over $1,000 a month. But the expanded approval should make it easier for some people to secure insurance coverage for Zepbound, and simply having more apnea interventions available is invaluable. So, as with obesity, this approval could very well usher in a new era of sleep apnea treatment.