Peptide basics

Liraglutide has twice tirzepatide's trials and an eighth of the attention

This page compares two approved compounds on their public evidence record and their public attention. It is not a comparison of effectiveness or safety and contains no dose, schedule or route.

Two records, pointing opposite ways

Liraglutide carries 442 verified registered trials against tirzepatide's 222 — almost exactly double. On attention the order reverses: tirzepatide's English Wikipedia article draws 38,322 views a month, liraglutide's 4,759.¹²³

The participant totals are the interesting part. Liraglutide's trials enrolled 88,495 people and tirzepatide's 85,102, which is close to parity. Tirzepatide reached a similar number of participants in half the trials, because its trials are bigger.¹²

Why the older compound has more trials

Trial counts accumulate. Liraglutide's registered history stretches back to trials starting in 2011 and earlier; tirzepatide's obesity programme began in December 2019. A compound with a decade's head start collects investigator-initiated studies, comparisons, and secondary indications that a newer one has not had time to attract.²

So the trial count is partly a measure of elapsed time. Reading it as a measure of how well-established a compound is means reading age as quality, which does not follow.¹²

What the two numbers are each good for

• Trial count: how much formal human testing exists, weighted by how long the compound has been around.
• Participant total: how many people that testing actually covered.
• Readership: how much public attention the compound currently has.
• None of the three: whether it works, or how it compares head to head.¹²³

Used together they describe a compound's position. Tirzepatide is newer, studied in fewer but larger trials, and far more talked about. Liraglutide is older, more broadly studied, and largely out of the conversation.¹²³

Common questions