This gets cited here weekly, usually second-hand, so it is worth setting out what it does and does not establish.
SELECT is the trial that changed the framing of this class, because it was an outcome trial rather than a weight trial: about a 20% relative reduction in major adverse cardiovascular events in people with established cardiovascular disease and overweight or obesity, without diabetes. The effect appeared earlier than the weight-loss curve can comfortably explain, which is the basis for arguing that some of the benefit is direct — anti-inflammatory and vascular — rather than purely a consequence of weight.
Where I think it is weakest: the completion rate deserves as much attention as the headline, because a large effect among those who finished is a different claim from a large effect among those enrolled.
The question I want answered is how much of the SELECT benefit is plausibly independent of the weight loss, and whether that distinction changes anything practical. I have searched first, so if this is covered somewhere point me at it and I will read it.
Figures above are from the primary publication rather than the press summary. If a number here disagrees with one you have, post yours and we will work out which of us is reading a secondary source.
Dr.CardioMD said:SELECT is the trial that changed the framing of this class, because it was an outcome trial rather than a weight trial: about a 20% relative reduction…
Agreed, and subgroup analyses deserve particular suspicion. With enough subgroups something is significant by chance, and pre-registered subgroups are a different animal from ones found afterwards.
Dr.CardioMD said:SELECT is the trial that changed the framing of this class, because it was an outcome trial rather than a weight trial: about a 20% relative reduction…
This is where I part company with the consensus forming above. The "earlier than weight loss explains" argument is weaker than this thread makes it sound. Blood pressure and inflammatory markers move fast and are downstream of early weight loss, so the mechanism is not as cleanly separable as the summaries imply.
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View ResultsShort answer first, then the reasoning. Relative and absolute effects need reading together. A 20% relative reduction on a high baseline risk is a large absolute benefit; the same relative figure on a low baseline risk is a small one, and press summaries almost always quote the relative number because it is bigger.