A new drug is helping mitigate one of the worst Wegovy side effects

By Claire Wolters | Fact-checked by Barbara Bekiesz

Published February 25, 2025

Key Takeaways

Industry Buzz

"The concern with anybody, no matter what form of weight loss they use, whether they are [utilizing] just diet and exercise or medications or even surgery, is you want to lose the fat mass and preserve the muscle." — Mir Ali, MD

Find more of your peers' perspectives and insights below.

A new drug may help mitigate some of Wegovy’s side effects, such as loss of lean muscle mass. This drug, known as Veru’s Enobosarm, is being studied as a complementary therapy alongside Wegovy. Research is still preliminary and in the investigational stage.

Why it matters

Preserving lean muscle can promote physical health and weight loss, as “the more muscle you have, the more calories you burn in the resting state,” says Mir Ali, MD, a board-certified bariatric surgeon and the medical director of MemorialCare Surgical Weight Loss Center at Orange Coast Medical Center in Fountain Valley, CA. And, Dr. Ali adds, the easier it is to maintain weight for people who have reached a weight loss goal.

Losing muscle mass can be a large concern for people on weight loss drugs—or pursuing weight loss through other means—due to muscle’s importance for everyday function. “The concern with anybody, no matter what form of weight loss they use, whether they are [utilizing] just diet and exercise or medications or even surgery, is you want to lose the fat mass and preserve the muscle,” Dr. Ali says.

Veru recently presented promising results from a phase 2 clinical trial using Enobosarm. In a press release, obesity expert and Veru consultant Dr. Louis Aronne, who was not directly involved in the study, described the clinical trial results as “very exciting.”^[]

“Weight loss through any modality produces a loss of both lean and fat mass,” Dr. Aronne said. “The greater magnitude of weight loss seen with bariatric surgery and GLP-1 RA based drugs has produced an unmet medical need to preserve muscle and physical function in older patients receiving these treatments.”

He added that this was the first clinical trial to demonstrate both prevention of lean muscle loss and prevention of muscle function decline associated with weight loss in older patients using GLP-1 RA medications.

Potential challenges

Enobosarm is not currently FDA approved. If it does gain approval in the future, access to the medication may be highly impacted by cost and insurance coverage.

“The big issue is, is it going to cost a lot? and is it going to be covered by insurance?’” Dr. Ali says. “These kinds of things always make it more, or less, accessible to people.”