By Dave Sebastian

Eli Lilly and Co. said its tirzepatide drug reduced the so-called A1C and body-weight levels more than a placebo in adults with type 2 diabetes in its monotherapy clinical trial.

A1C is a test that measures average blood-sugar levels. Lilly said tirzepatide reduced A1C by up to 2.07% and body weight by up to 9.5 kilograms compared with the placebo. Up to 52% of participants had an A1C less than 5.7%, or the level seen in people without diabetes, Lilly said.

"Tirzepatide led to significant improvements across all primary and key secondary endpoints with clinically meaningful A1C reductions and robust weight loss among study participants, who had a relatively short duration of type 2 diabetes," said Julio Rosenstock,, director of the Dallas Diabetes Research Center at Medical City and principal investigator of Surpass-1, the clinical trial.

The company said the drug led to improvements in the change in fasting serum glucose from baseline. Tirzepatide also led to improvements in the change in two-hour post-meal glucose values from baseline from self-monitored blood glucose data, Lilly said.

Treatment discontinuation rates due to adverse events were below 7% in each tirzepatide treatment arm, the company said.

The findings were presented Saturday and will be featured during a symposium sponsored by the American Diabetes Association Tuesday.

Write to Dave Sebastian at dave.sebastian@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

06-28-21 0650ET