Weight regain and cardiometabolic effects after withdrawal of semaglutide: The STEP 1 trial extension.

Studied

Exploratory follow-up after semaglutide or placebo and the accompanying lifestyle intervention were stopped.

Who / model

327 adults from the original trial, without diabetes, followed for one year after completing 68 weeks of treatment.

Studied dose & schedule

Dose and schedule have not yet been extracted for this summary.

Found

Initial weight loss was 17.3% with semaglutide versus 2.0% with placebo. After stopping treatment, participants regained 11.6 versus 1.9 percentage points, leaving net losses of 5.6% versus 0.1%. Semaglutide participants regained about two-thirds of their prior loss, and most cardiometabolic improvements moved toward baseline.

Limits

The extension was exploratory and included a subset of treatment completers. Both medication and lifestyle intervention were discontinued.

Read summary source ↗ · Prepared 9/16/2026 · AI-assisted, source-based summary