Efficacy and safety of once-weekly semaglutide 2·[amount hidden] in Chinese adults with overweight or obesity (STEP 12): a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, multicentre, phase 3b trial

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Semaglutide in this randomized controlled trial publication.

For the Mandarin translation of the abstract see Supplementary Materials section.

Who Took Part

According to the abstract, 4 adults were involved.

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were adults, middle-aged adults and older adults, both men and women.

Safety was analysed descriptively in all participants who received the trial intervention.

How the Study Was Run

The design is described as randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, multicenter and parallel-group.

The adults were allocated by chance, so the Semaglutide group and the comparison group should start out alike.

As a double-blind Semaglutide study, the assignments were hidden from both participants and investigators until the end.

The comparison arm used a placebo, so changes seen with Semaglutide could be set against what happens without it.

More than one site took part, so the adults came from several places.

This completed randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, multicentre, two-armed, parallel-group, phase 3b trial (STEP 12) was conducted at 19 sites across mainland China and Taiwan.

Missing data at week 44 were imputed with washout multiple imputation.

This study is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT06041217, and is completed.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Body Mass Index, China, Diabetes Mellitus, Type 2, Hypoglycemic Agents, Obesity, Overweight and Semaglutide.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Semaglutide in 4 adults.

With fewer than 40 people, it is a small study, so it is better read as an early signal for further research than as a settled answer.

Results are reported in around 5 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2026 (The lancet. Diabetes & endocrinology), a journal based in England.

More context: the Semaglutide compound page, all human trials.