Search cagrilintide before and after and you get scale photos with big numbers on them. The trial that gave cagrilintide alone measured 9.7% body-weight reduction over 26 weeks. The 20.4% figure came from a different drug combination.
The short answer. Cagrilintide alone was measured at 9.7% body-weight reduction over 26 weeks in a placebo-controlled Phase 2 trial published in The Lancet.
- The widely quoted 20.4% figure came from REDEFINE-1, which gave cagrilintide together with semaglutide for 68 weeks.
- A second 2025 NEJM trial in adults with type 2 diabetes reported a smaller weight reduction than REDEFINE-1.
- Published cagrilintide trials measured body weight on a scale; the peer-reviewed record contains no before-and-after photographs.
Cagrilintide is a weekly amylin analog. Alone, it cut body weight 9.7% in Phase 2. That trial ran 26 weeks. The famous 20.4% belongs to CagriSema. That pairs cagrilintide with semaglutide for 68 weeks. Neither is FDA-approved as of May 2026.
What was actually measured
The human record for cagrilintide by itself is one Phase 2 trial. Lau and colleagues published it in The Lancet in 2021. It was randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, and it also had an active comparator arm.
It ran 26 weeks. It was a dose-finding study, so several dose levels were tested at once. The outcome that matters here was percent change in body weight. This site reports the top-line result as 9.7%.
Note what that design gives you. A placebo group. A second drug to compare against. A fixed timeline. That is more than almost any compound in this catalog can show.
Treatment with once-weekly cagrilintide in a dose-escalation regimen resulted in significant reductions in bodyweight and was well tolerated.
Lau et al., The Lancet, 2021Gastrointestinal complaints, mostly nausea, were the adverse events reported most often. That is the tolerability side of the same trial, and it does not appear in a photograph. The cagrilintide complete guide covers the full development path.
The 20.4% figure is CagriSema, not cagrilintide
This is the single most common mix-up in this query. The number people quote is 20.4%. It came from REDEFINE-1, published by Garvey and colleagues in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2025.
REDEFINE-1 did not give cagrilintide alone. It gave cagrilintide coadministered with semaglutide, a combination called CagriSema, over 68 weeks.
Among adults with overweight or obesity, once-weekly cagrilintide–semaglutide resulted in significantly greater reductions in body weight than placebo.
Garvey et al., New England Journal of Medicine, 2025So the before-and-after being sold is two compounds and more than double the time. Cagrilintide on its own was measured for half a year and reported 9.7%. Those are not the same result and they are not interchangeable.
The cagrilintide benefits page separates the two claims in more detail.
What the trials measured, side by side
Two cagrilintide–semaglutide trials landed in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2025. One enrolled adults with overweight or obesity. The other, from Davies and colleagues, enrolled adults who also had type 2 diabetes, and its weight reduction was smaller than in the non-diabetes trial.
| Trial | What was given | Duration | Body-weight change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lau 2021, Phase 2 | Cagrilintide alone | 26 weeks | 9.7% |
| REDEFINE-1 (Garvey 2025) | Cagrilintide + semaglutide | 68 weeks | 20.4% |
| REDEFINE-2 (Davies 2025) | Cagrilintide + semaglutide, type 2 diabetes | 68 weeks | Smaller than REDEFINE-1 |
A 2024 systematic review and meta-analysis in the Indian Journal of Endocrinology and Metabolism pooled the cagrilintide and CagriSema data. Its framing is the same as ours: the combination outperformed either part alone. A 2024 obesity pipeline review in the International Journal of Obesity places cagrilintide among the amylin analogs still in development, not among approved drugs.
As of May 2026, neither cagrilintide nor CagriSema is FDA-approved.
Cagrilintide
The compound discussed here, supplied as a research compound with a certificate of analysis matched to the lot.
What a before-and-after photo leaves out
A trial reports things a photo cannot. Those things are usually the reason the photo looks the way it does.
- The placebo arm also changed. People in placebo groups lose weight too. Without that arm, you cannot tell how much the drug did.
- Lifestyle support was part of the trial. Modern obesity trials layer diet and activity counseling onto both arms. The photo rarely says what the person ate.
- The clock is fixed. 26 weeks or 68 weeks. An undated pair of photos has no timeline at all.
- Dropouts are counted. People who stop are still in the published analysis. They are never in the photo set.
- Side effects are reported. Nausea and other gut complaints were the most frequent events in the Phase 2 trial.
Published trials of cagrilintide used scales, not cameras. The number of before-and-after photographs in the peer-reviewed cagrilintide record is zero.
Is the vial the same thing the trial used?
Not automatically, and this is the part worth checking before anything else. The trials used pharmaceutical-grade material made under regulatory oversight. A research vial is a research chemical.
The approval status of a drug a compound resembles is never the status of the vial. Cagrilintide is not approved. CagriSema is not approved. A trial result does not transfer to unverified material.
- Ask for the certificate of analysis. Read how to read a peptide certificate of analysis first, because a logo is not a result.
- Check who ran the test. An ISO/IEC 17025 accredited lab is held to a published competence standard for testing laboratories.
- Check handling. Lyophilized peptides have storage requirements; see peptide storage temperature.
- Check your own rules. Legal status varies, and the legality page covers the research-use framing. Tested athletes should read the WADA Prohibited List directly.
How to read a cagrilintide before and after honestly
Three questions answer most of them.
First: was semaglutide in the picture? If the number is near 20.4%, the published source is a two-drug combination. Second: how long? Cagrilintide alone was measured for 26 weeks, and 68 weeks is a different study entirely. Third: what else changed? Trial participants received structured lifestyle support, and so do most people posting photos.
Cagrilintide is one of the few compounds in this market with a real controlled before and after. The honest version of it is 9.7% over 26 weeks in a Phase 2 trial. It is a smaller number than the photos use, and it is the one with a placebo arm behind it.
For the pharmacology and the amylin background, see the complete guide.
Cagrilintide
Third-party tested research compounds, each shipped with a batch-matched certificate of analysis showing HPLC purity and mass-spec identity — the documentation this site argues you should hold any supplier to.
What to know now
- Cagrilintide alone was measured at 9.7% body-weight reduction over 26 weeks in a placebo-controlled Phase 2 trial published in The Lancet.
- The widely quoted 20.4% figure came from REDEFINE-1, which gave cagrilintide together with semaglutide for 68 weeks.
- A second 2025 NEJM trial in adults with type 2 diabetes reported a smaller weight reduction than REDEFINE-1.
- Published cagrilintide trials measured body weight on a scale; the peer-reviewed record contains no before-and-after photographs.
- Neither cagrilintide nor CagriSema is FDA-approved as of May 2026, and a research vial is not the trial drug.
What we're watching
Check two things in any cagrilintide before and after: whether semaglutide was also administered, and whether the timeline is 26 weeks or 68 weeks. Those two details separate a 9.7% result from a 20.4% one.
Frequently asked questions
Does a cagrilintide before and after photo show cagrilintide alone?
Often not. The largest published number, 20.4% over 68 weeks, came from CagriSema, which combines cagrilintide with semaglutide. Cagrilintide by itself was reported at 9.7% over 26 weeks in its Phase 2 trial.
How long did the cagrilintide trial run?
The Phase 2 dose-finding trial by Lau and colleagues ran 26 weeks. The two cagrilintide-semaglutide trials published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2025 ran 68 weeks. Those are reported trial durations, not a schedule for anyone to follow.
Is cagrilintide FDA-approved?
No. As of May 2026, neither cagrilintide nor CagriSema has FDA approval. Material sold on the research market is not an approved medicine, and the approval status of similar drugs does not apply to it.
Is cagrilintide the same as CagriSema?
No. CagriSema is cagrilintide coadministered with semaglutide. Most of the headline weight numbers online belong to the combination, not to cagrilintide on its own.
Did the trials include diet and exercise?
Modern obesity trials layer lifestyle support onto every arm, including placebo. That is one reason a placebo group matters: it shows how much of the change came from the drug and how much came from everything else.
Will cagrilintide show on a doping test?
Tested athletes should read the WADA Prohibited List themselves rather than rely on a vendor page. Peptide hormones and metabolic modulators are categories WADA addresses directly, and the list is revised each year.
What people actually report
These are self-reports, not evidence. No control group, no blinding, and no independent check that the vial held what the label claimed. They are collected here because people asking about Cagrilintide deserve an answer rather than a refusal, and because what the community believes is itself worth knowing. Quotes are excerpts; each links to the original post.
These are uncontrolled self-reports, and the first thing they show is a stacking problem: five of the six sources here run cagrilintide on top of tirzepatide or retatrutide rather than alone, so almost nothing described can be assigned to cagrilintide by itself. Within that limit the reports do not converge. u/mooswi on r/Retatrutide, about a month into retatrutide, adds cagrilintide and writes that the smell, thought and sight of food are nauseating and that they have not eaten in almost five days; the same post calls the peptide incredibly intense and tells readers not to take it. u/Practical-Object-818, already maxed out on tirzepatide, reports feeling nothing on the day of the shot or the day after, then waking nauseous and drained. u/Significant-Gap6571 reports the opposite problem: 0.25 did nothing, 0.50 did nothing, and only 1mg registered. u/Due_University5083 reports constipation bad enough to stop for good, and no calming of food noise. Two of the six are creator videos whose descriptions link to paid coaching or a paid course. Nothing here is controlled, blinded, or checked against a lab result on the vial.
Where the community and the published record disagree. Five of the six self-reports here run cagrilintide on top of tirzepatide or retatrutide. A ClinicalTrials.gov query for cagrilintide as an intervention returns 43 registered studies, and not one of them gives cagrilintide together with either drug. Tirzepatide appears in exactly three, and in all three it is what CagriSema is measured against rather than something added to it: NCT06131437, NCT06221969 and NCT06534411 are all titled as CagriSema compared to tirzepatide. Retatrutide appears in none of the 43. The combination the registry has actually tested is cagrilintide with semaglutide, which is CagriSema, in 34 of the 43. One trial does co-dose cagrilintide with something other than semaglutide, Novo Nordisk's NCT07411560, which pairs it with GIP to study stomach side effects. The stack the community reaches for first is the one its own evidence base has never run.
“I have not eaten for almost 5 days now, genuinely.”
“Today I wake up feeling nauseous and just drained.”
“So started at 0.25 nothing. Tried 0.50 nothing.”
“I didn't notice any calming of food noise”
Comment on: Information about Cagrilintide. How did it work for you? Side effects?
“Serotonin Connection: Why Cagrilintide Can Make You Feel Down”
My Honest Cagrilintide Experience: Side Effects, Benefits & Best Dose
“becoming one of the most talked-about combinations for appetite suppression, cravings, and fat loss”
Retatrutide + Cagrilintide: The STRONGEST Appetite Suppression Stack?!
Posts are quoted under fair use and linked to their authors. Nothing on this page is hosted here, and no claim above has been verified beyond confirming that the person wrote it.
References
- Lau, D. C. W., Erichsen, L., Francisco, A. M., Satylganova, A., le Roux, C. W., McGowan, B., Pedersen, S. D., Pietiläinen, K. H., Rubino, D., & Batterham, R. L. (2021). Once-weekly cagrilintide for weight management in people with overweight and obesity: a multicentre, randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled and active-controlled, dose-finding phase 2 trial. The Lancet, 398(10317), 2160–2172. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(21)01751-7
- Garvey, W. T., Blüher, M., Osorto Contreras, C. K., et al. (2025). Coadministered cagrilintide and semaglutide in adults with overweight or obesity. New England Journal of Medicine, 393(7), 635–647. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMoa2502081
- Davies, M. J., Bajaj, H. S., Broholm, C., et al. (2025). Cagrilintide–semaglutide in adults with overweight or obesity and type 2 diabetes. New England Journal of Medicine, 393(7), 648–659. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMoa2502082
- Dutta, D., Nagendra, L., Harish, B. G., et al. (2024). Efficacy and safety of cagrilintide alone and in combination with semaglutide (CagriSema) as anti-obesity medications: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Indian Journal of Endocrinology and Metabolism, 28(5), 436–444. https://doi.org/10.4103/ijem.ijem_45_24
- Melson, E., Ashraf, U., Papamargaritis, D., & Davies, M. J. (2024). What is the pipeline for future medications for obesity? International Journal of Obesity, 49(3), 433–451. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41366-024-01473-y
- International Organization for Standardization. (2017). ISO/IEC 17025:2017 — General requirements for the competence of testing and calibration laboratories. https://www.iso.org/standard/66912.html
- World Anti-Doping Agency. The Prohibited List 2026. https://www.wada-ama.org/en/prohibited-list