Lilly says its weight loss drugs Mounjaro and Zepbound shouldn’t be used for ‘cosmetic’ reasons

Eli Lil­ly says it wants peo­ple to stop us­ing its drugs Zep­bound and Moun­jaro for “cos­met­ic weight loss,” pub­lish­ing a let­ter Thurs­day say­ing that it “stands against the use of its med­i­cines” for that pur­pose.

The two drugs are dif­fer­ent ap­provals of tirzepatide — Zep­bound for chron­ic weight man­age­ment and Moun­jaro for type 2 di­a­betes — which in stud­ies have record­ed weight loss ef­fects of up to 20% of body mass. The da­ta led to a so­cial me­dia tsuna­mi of per­son­al tes­ti­mo­ni­als and physi­cian videos, posts and claims around the use of Moun­jaro off-la­bel last year af­ter its type 2 ap­proval, and more re­cent­ly af­ter Zep­bound’s No­vem­ber obe­si­ty ap­proval.

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