STEP 1-5 trials comprehensive summary — what worked for you?

mike_nyc said:

The dose-response is real but shallow at the top.

Pushing back on mike_nyc here. The trial means are being read too generously in this thread. STEP populations were selected, supported, and titrated by protocol, and the real-world curves are consistently a few points worse. That difference is not noise, it is what happens when you remove the study infrastructure.

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

One concrete data point for the thread. For anyone assembling their own picture: Tmax is one to three days, terminal half-life about 165 to 170 hours, steady state at four to five weeks, and subcutaneous bioavailability near 89%. Those four numbers explain most of the questions people ask about timing.

PeptideChemSF said:

The trial means are being read too generously in this thread.

There is a second half to this that has not been said yet. Relative and absolute effects need reading together. A 20% relative reduction on a high baseline risk is a large absolute benefit; the same relative figure on a low baseline risk is a small one, and press summaries almost always quote the relative number because it is bigger.

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

How to read a result like this without either dismissing it or over-reading it, since the summaries all read like press releases?

Reporting back.

Update. I did go to 2.4mg in the end, and the honest report is that it bought me less than the step before it and cost me two bad weeks. Worth knowing rather than worth repeating.