Mazdutide

What it is

Mazdutide is a once-a-week weight-loss shot that quiets appetite like semaglutide and adds a glucagon effect that burns a little more and clears liver fat. In its main trial people lost about 15 percent of their weight at 6 mg over 48 weeks.

Mazdutide is for someone who has decided on a GLP-1 class drug for weight and wants the glucagon angle: a bit more energy burn and a specific effect on liver fat, which matters if a scan or blood test has flagged a fatty liver. It is also drawing people who plateaued on semaglutide and want to switch rather than climb. It is not for someone at a healthy weight chasing the last five pounds, and not for anyone with a personal or family history of medullary thyroid cancer, which is a class-wide rule.

Appetite drops within the first week at 3 mg; most people describe food getting quiet rather than being repelled by it. Weight moves from week two or three, typically a pound or two a week once you are at 4.5 to 6 mg, slowing after month six. The trial numbers are the honest ceiling: about 15 percent at 6 mg over 48 weeks and about 18.5 percent at 9 mg over 60 weeks, closer to 20 in people without diabetes. The glucagon side shows up as a slightly faster resting pulse and, for some, better energy on a deficit than semaglutide gave them. It will not keep the weight off if you stop; this class is maintenance, not a course.

Start at 3 mg once a week and hold it at least four weeks, then 4.5 mg, then 6 mg, moving up only when the nausea from the last step has faded. 9 mg is for people who have stalled at 6 and tolerate it. Same day each week, any time, food does not matter. Mix to a known concentration (the calculator here uses a 10 mg vial in 1 ml, so 10 units is 1 mg and 6 mg is 60 units) and dose by milligrams, never by eyeballing a line on a syringe, because vial sizes vary and the ramp depends on precision. A 10 mg vial is about three weeks at the starting dose and under two at 6 mg, so budget for it. The named mistakes are jumping to 6 mg in week two and running an unknown-purity vial of a drug strong enough to put you in bed.

This is drug-tier evidence: completed phase 3 trials in China (the GLORY program), approval there in 2025 for weight management and type 2 diabetes, and a completed US phase 2 program. We grade it animal 4, human 4. What is missing is a Western approval and the long-term safety record that comes with years on the market, and, for anything you buy here, a pharmacy-grade product.

If you want the most weight loss per dollar with an approved product, tirzepatide is the proven pick and semaglutide the cheapest. If you want the biggest numbers in trials, retatrutide (three receptors) beats mazdutide's two. Mazdutide makes sense when the glucagon effect on liver fat is specifically what you want, or when you have already run the approved options. Survodutide is its closest cousin and worth comparing.

What people use it for

Safety, in brief

The full picture — stop signs and who should talk to a doctor first — is on the dosing guide.

Sources

The labels and studies behind this page. Each link opens the original on PubMed, DailyMed or ClinicalTrials.gov.

1. Once-Weekly Mazdutide in Chinese Adults with Obesity or OverweightJi et al., N Engl J Med 2025 · Trial
2. Treatment With 9-mg Mazdutide for Weight Reduction in Chinese Adults With Obesity: The GLORY-2 Randomized Clinical TrialGao et al., JAMA 2026 · Trial
3. Mazdutide versus placebo in Chinese adults with type 2 diabetesZhu et al., Nature 2026 · Trial
4. Efficacy and safety of mazdutide in adults with obesity or overweight: a US-based, multicentre, phase 2, randomised, placebo-controlled clinical trialHsia et al., Lancet Diabetes Endocrinol 2026 · Trial