What does TRIUMPH-3 report at the 12 mg dose level?

Accepted answer

Read the 12 mg row, not the pooled one. A programme that randomised more than one dose level reports each arm separately, and the figure that circulates afterwards is usually either the top-dose arm or an average across arms nobody was randomised to. If TRIUMPH-3 ran a 12 mg arm, that row carries its own sample size and its own confidence interval, and both are narrower than the trial-level ones by roughly the square root of however many arms there were. Take the primary publication rather than the press release: one reports by arm, the other reports whichever number is largest. A dose level inside a trial is a protocol decision made under supervision, not a recommendation, and nothing here is medical advice.

Mechanically, this is answerable from the published record, but only if you take the placebo arm seriously rather than reading the active arm alone.

Intention-to-treat and per-protocol analyses answer different questions. ITT asks what happens if you offer the treatment; per-protocol asks what happens if it is taken as directed. The gap between the two is a measure of how tolerable the protocol was.

Confidence intervals matter more than point estimates when two trials disagree. Two studies reporting fifteen and twenty per cent whose intervals overlap heavily have not disagreed about anything.

The cardiovascular outcome programme in this class runs to several large randomised trials — LEADER for liraglutide, SUSTAIN-6 and SELECT for semaglutide, REWIND for dulaglutide — and they are the reason the class is discussed as more than a weight intervention.

If a claim cannot be traced to a named trial with a named endpoint, treat it as a claim rather than as evidence.

edited 16 Aug 2026 by tabular_nums — added the placebo-arm figures