Episode
GLP-1 Study is an EPIC Fail Part 2 - Analysis
- Podcast
- Weight and Healthcare
- Published
- Jul 18, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 587
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Summary
In Part 1 we started discussing the study Two Years After Stopping GLP-1s, Most Patients Sustain at Least Some Weight Loss by Bartelt et al. which I identified as possibly the worst, and definitely among the top 3 worst, studies I’ve ever analyzed. In part 1 we talked about the platform (Epic Research), the researchers, and the basic methodology for reporting. Today we’re going to get into the analysis. Remember that there are two sources, the first is the actual article, the second is what I am calling the supplementary materials that is a pdf that is linked (though not at all clearly) in the article. We’ll compare the claims made in the article to the data shown in the supplementary materials. I think as we get into this it may be helpful (and maybe just a bit comforting) to remember that this was not published in a peer reviewed journal - it’s Epic publishing Epic’s research on Epic’s website. We’ll begin with the most basic claim: “we studied 188,722 patients who stopped using a GLP-1 medication after being on it for at least 90 days and who lost at least 5 pounds while on it.” You might be thinking “wait - in Part 1 you said the study population was 323,782, what happened to the other 135,060 people? Let’s go on this journey together. We’ll start by looking at their data. In the supplementary materials, Table 1: Characteristics of the Study Population looks like this: So they say in the article that they studied 188,722 patients but the very first line of the supplementary materials chart about the study population says that the total number of patients was 323,782. But it gets a bit weirder, if you add up all the participants in the different age categories you get 323,750, 32 short. If you add up the totals across the drug groups you do get 188,722, if you add u…