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Switching from one GLP-1 RA to another?
I started on zepbound (tirzepatide) in a quest to reduce the pain of my knee arthritis -- buy time before replacing the joint -- which worked, but triggered a number of side effects that eventually became intolerable. Switched to ozempic (semaglutide). On the plus side, this really did reduce the side effects. (It helped that it's a multipen, which means I could click-dose.) On the minus side, apparently arthritis is emerging as a semaglutide side effect, and it may be one of mine. Everything else is going well, but the arthritis symptoms are coming back. So I'm thinking about switching again, if my orthopedist confirms that this is what's going on. I can go back to tirzepatide, or consider one of the older GLP-1RAs, like exanatide XR or dulaglutide. Or I could wait it out, and switch to a new product now in the pipeline when it becomes commercially available. Or I could get really creative, and alternate 6 months on semaglutide and 6 months on tirzepatide. Or something. Anyone else have experience with switching between these meds or thoughts on how to approach this problem?
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I switched from tirzepatide to semaglutide, and overall, it's much better. I've got an orthopedist appointment coming up in March, because I now think the knee pain is not actually the arthritis coming back and has nothing to do with the GLA-1 RA -- I suspect it's a fragment of bone snapped off and caught under the kneecap. I love the ozempic multipen, which has allowed me to click-count (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3262738/) and fine-tune the dosage -- that alone is worth the price of admission, as it were. Currently working on the remaining side effects one at a time: eliminated simvastatin, which helped the GLP-1 RA orthostatic hypotension quite a bit, and have been able to drop one of my migraine prevention meds by managing my nocturnal hypoglycemia. Next up are constipation and sleep. Hoping to be stable by the summer.
@projfan, did you switch? How is it going?