{"id":140000,"date":"2026-11-13T17:51:40","date_gmt":"2026-11-13T22:51:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cardiologynownews.org\/?p=140000"},"modified":"2026-11-13T17:51:41","modified_gmt":"2026-11-13T22:51:41","slug":"attain-osa-once-daily-orforglipron-pill-eased-sleep-apnea-in-adults-with-obesity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cardiologynownews.org\/?p=140000","title":{"rendered":"ATTAIN-OSA: Once-Daily Orforglipron Pill Eased Sleep Apnea in Adults with Obesity"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Orforglipron, a once-daily oral GLP-1 pill, reduced sleep apnea severity in adults with obesity, whether or not they used a PAP machine.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Breathing interruptions during sleep fell by about 18 per hour with the study drug, vs about 5 with placebo.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Patients lost about 10% of their body weight, and systolic blood pressure dropped by about 7 mm Hg.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>For decades, the main treatment for obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) has been a positive airway pressure (PAP) machine worn at night. It helps patients sleep better, but 4 major randomized trials have not shown that it lowers cardiovascular risk. Obesity is one of the biggest drivers of OSA, which makes weight loss a natural target.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In a late-breaking presentation at the American Heart Association 2026 Scientific Sessions, <a href=\"https:\/\/profiles.mountsinai.org\/vaishnavi-kundel\">Dr. Vaishnavi Kundel <\/a>of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai presented ATTAIN-OSA (<a href=\"https:\/\/clinicaltrials.gov\/study\/NCT06649045\">NCT06649045<\/a>), simultaneously published in the <em><a href=\"https:\/\/jamanetwork.com\/journals\/jama\/fullarticle\/2856406\">Journal of the American Medical Association<\/a><\/em>. The program, funded by Eli Lilly, tested orforglipron, an oral GLP-1 receptor agonist, in two phase 3 trials. Both enrolled adults with overweight or obesity (BMI \u2265 27 kg\/m<sup>2<\/sup>) and moderate to severe OSA, without diabetes. The first trial (n=363) included people who were not using PAP. The second (n=349) included people who were, and who paused it for a week before each sleep study. Patients were randomized to orforglipron or placebo for 52 weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The main measure was the apnea-hypopnea index (AHI), the number of times per hour that breathing stops or becomes shallow during sleep. Patients started with severe OSA, with an average AHI greater than 50.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At 52 weeks, orforglipron cut AHI by about 18 events per hour in both trials, compared with about 5 with placebo (<em>P<\/em>&lt;0.001). That was a 35% reduction in patients not using PAP and a 26% reduction in PAP users. Hypoxic burden, which measures how much oxygen levels drop during these events, fell more than twice as much with the drug as with placebo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The benefits went beyond sleep. Patients on orforglipron lost about 10% of their body weight, compared with 1% to 2% on placebo. At 48 weeks, systolic blood pressure dropped by about 7 mm Hg, compared with about 2 mm Hg on placebo, and C-reactive protein, a marker of inflammation, fell by about 40%. Kundel noted that PAP lowers blood pressure in OSA by only 2 to 3 mm Hg. Patients on the drug also reported feeling less impaired by poor sleep, but the difference from placebo was not statistically significant in the main analysis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Stomach side effects were the most common, mainly nausea, which affected about a third of patients on orforglipron. Side effects led 7% to 12% of patients on the drug to stop treatment, compared with 1% to 4% on placebo. The safety findings matched earlier orforglipron trials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The trial excluded people with diabetes and was not designed to determine whether orforglipron reduces cardiovascular events.<\/strong> The blood pressure results were not adjusted for multiple comparisons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Kundel and colleagues concluded that the results provide &#8220;evidence for the potential use of orforglipron as an oral treatment option for moderate to severe OSA in adults with overweight or obesity.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For decades, the main treatment for obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) has been a positive airway pressure (PAP) machine worn at night. It helps patients sleep better, but 4 major randomized trials have not shown that it lowers cardiovascular risk. Obesity is one of the biggest drivers of OSA, which makes weight loss a natural target. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40617,"featured_media":140001,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"aside","meta":{"footnotes":"","_ppma_block_editor_authors":""},"categories":[1093,8],"tags":[1096,47,185],"tmauthors":[],"ppma_author":[1071],"class_list":{"0":"post-140000","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-aside","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-aha-2026","8":"category-news","9":"tag-aha-2026","10":"tag-featured","11":"tag-news","12":"post_format-post-format-aside","13":"author-joseph-nasr-md"},"authors":[{"term_id":1071,"user_id":40617,"is_guest":0,"slug":"joseph-nasr-md","display_name":"Joseph Nasr","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/530a343d3e08798e23303e3dcee6bf2f19a4e0175dee36ab2ec2fe9681868aa3?s=96&r=g","avatar_alt":"","avatar_decorative":"","author_category":"1","first_name":"Joseph","last_name":"Nasr","user_url":"","job_title":"Research Fellow, Baim Institute for Clinical Research","description":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cardiologynownews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140000","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cardiologynownews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cardiologynownews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cardiologynownews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/40617"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cardiologynownews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=140000"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cardiologynownews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140000\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":140002,"href":"https:\/\/cardiologynownews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140000\/revisions\/140002"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cardiologynownews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/140001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cardiologynownews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=140000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cardiologynownews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=140000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cardiologynownews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=140000"},{"taxonomy":"tmauthors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cardiologynownews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftmauthors&post=140000"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cardiologynownews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fppma_author&post=140000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}