GIP receptor: the underappreciated half of tirzepatide's mechanism

One concrete data point for the thread. Numbers worth memorising for this class: Tmax one to three days for the weekly peptides, terminal half-life about a week for semaglutide and about five days for tirzepatide, steady state at four to five half-lives, subcutaneous bioavailability high enough that site choice is irrelevant.

If somebody has the primary source to hand I would rather cite it than paraphrase it.

A narrower follow-up, since the general answer is now clear:

How much of the tirzepatide advantage is the GIP component and how much is simply that the dose ladder goes higher in receptor-occupancy terms?

dan_philly said:

Numbers worth memorising for this class: Tmax one to three days for the weekly peptides, terminal half-life about a week for semaglutide and about…

Coming at dan_philly’s question from a different direction. The mechanism is more central than most summaries suggest. Receptor agonism in the arcuate nucleus activates POMC neurons and inhibits AgRP/NPY signalling, and the downstream MC4R pathway is the same one disrupted in monogenic obesity — convergent genetic evidence that the target is the right one. Peripherally there is glucose-dependent insulin secretion, glucagon suppression and delayed gastric emptying, but the gastric component largely adapts over months while the central effect persists, which is why the durable effect is appetite rather than fullness.

Reporting back.

Update: the eight-week restart pattern people described is exactly what happened. I nearly abandoned it at week five.

lisa_labSD said:

The mechanism is more central than most summaries suggest.

True, though the ladder is longer and that is not a neutral detail — six dose steps means six opportunities to stall on the way up, and plenty of people never reach the dose the headline number came from.

Worth separating that from the pharmacology, which this thread keeps folding into the same question. They behave differently and the advice does not transfer.