People who report taking cagrilintide name a median of half a milligram a week. The phase 3 trials gave 2.4 milligrams, and gave it with a different partner drug. That gap is the whole file. Cagrilintide is one of the few compounds on this site with large, completed human trials, so this is not a story about missing evidence. It is a story about people using a well-studied drug in a way nobody studied.
For what cagrilintide is and how it works, read What is cagrilintide?. This page is only about the numbers.
Two crowds, one centre
We read two separate places, and we keep them separate.
| YouTube | Forum discussions | |
|---|---|---|
| People describing their own use | 49 | 229 |
| Doses named | 67 doses | 165 people name a current dose |
| Median | 0.5 mg | 0.5 mg |
| Middle half | 0.25 → 1 mg | 0.25 → 1 mg |
| Under 1 mg | 42 of 67 | 100 of 165 |
The YouTube layer is comments and video transcripts. The second layer is forum discussions, archived on the ZyraTrack forum. The two are never added together: a person could have written in both, and a sum would count them twice.
What makes the number worth reporting is that the crowds did not talk to each other, and they landed in the same place. The most-named single amounts are the same three in both: 0.25, 0.5 and 1 mg.
What the trials tested (humans)
Cagrilintide has real trials behind it. These are the doses they used.
| Study | Model | Key result | Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lau et al., phase 2 dose-finding 1 | 706 adults assigned to once-weekly cagrilintide at 0.3, 0.6, 1.2, 2.4 or 4.5 mg; 26 weeks, with up to 6 weeks of dose escalation | Weight fell 6.0% at the lowest dose up to 10.8% at 4.5 mg, against 3.0% on placebo | 2021 |
| Frias et al., phase 2 in type 2 diabetes 4 | 92 adults; cagrilintide, semaglutide, or both, each escalated to 2.4 mg weekly; 32 weeks | Body weight fell 15.6% on the combination | 2023 |
| REDEFINE 1, phase 3 2 | 3,417 adults without diabetes; cagrilintide 2.4 mg with semaglutide 2.4 mg weekly; 68 weeks | Weight fell 20.4% on the combination against 3.0% on placebo | 2025 |
| REDEFINE 2, phase 3 3 | Adults with type 2 diabetes; cagrilintide 2.4 mg with semaglutide 2.4 mg weekly; 68 weeks | Weight fell 13.7% against 3.4% on placebo; gastrointestinal side effects in 72.5% against 34.4% | 2025 |
Two things stand out against the reports above. The dose the programme settled on is 2.4 mg, about five times what people name. And the trials, too, started low: the phase 2 trial built in up to six weeks of escalation before anyone reached their assigned dose. The difference is that trial participants kept climbing to a target. The people we read mostly did not.
Start low, stay low
The 165 people in forum discussions who name a dose often name more than one: where they began, where they are now, and the most they ever took.
| Median | Under 1 mg | At 2.4 mg or more | |
|---|---|---|---|
| First dose | 0.4 mg | 124 of 165 | 6 of 165 |
| Dose now | 0.5 mg | 100 of 165 | 14 of 165 |
| Highest ever | 0.6 mg | 93 of 165 | 22 of 165 |
From first dose to highest dose, the median moves by two tenths of a milligram. Only 22 people of 165 ever name the phase 3 dose or more.
The bottle is not the dose
When people name the container, they name a 5 mg vial (21 times) or a 10 mg vial (13 times). At half a milligram a week, a 5 mg vial is ten weeks of doses. That arithmetic is where unit mistakes live, and we saw them: 8 figures were kept out of the dose counts because the unit had clearly slipped, a milligram figure written where micrograms were meant or the vial size given as the dose.
This is the unit trap that mcg, mg and IU: the units conversion guide explains: the number printed on the vial is the amount in the container, not the amount in a dose. The cagrilintide reconstitution calculator does that conversion and shows the working.
A different partner
In every published trial of a combination, the partner was semaglutide. In forum discussions it mostly is not.
A person can name more than one partner, so the bars do not add to 229. What they show is that the most common real-world pairing, cagrilintide with retatrutide, is one no published trial has tested. The same is true of tirzepatide. Whatever those combinations do, the REDEFINE results do not describe them.
How often
Most people do not say. Of 229, only 77 state a frequency: 57 once a week, 18 more than once a week, 2 less often. Once weekly is what the trials used and what the molecule was built for, with a half-life of about a week 5. The half-life page draws that curve.
How it went, and the word they share
We count one verdict per person, not per post, so a person who wrote twenty times still counts once.
Mixed is the largest group, and that is unusual for a community log, where people who are pleased usually write the most.
Of the 229, 76 name at least one side effect, and 24 say plainly that they had none.
Fatigue leads, named by 40 of the 76. In the YouTube layer the numbers are far smaller, only a handful of people name any side effect at all, and tiredness is again the word that appears more than once. In the trials the side effects that led were gastrointestinal: nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea 3.
Read this carefully. Most of these people take a second drug, often one that sharply cuts how much they eat. These counts are what people felt while on the combination. They do not show that cagrilintide caused it.
Who stopped, and who is waiting
51 of the 229 stopped. The reasons they give fall into four kinds: too tired, felt too sick, the other drug was already enough, or a pause they describe as temporary.
On the other side of the door, 166 more people say they plan to start. They are not in any count above, because they have not taken anything. They are here because they show which way the interest is moving: toward a use of this drug that the trials do not cover.
What this file does not say
- It does not say the low dose is safer. Nobody measured that.
- It does not say the low dose works as well. The trials that showed 20% weight loss used 2.4 mg with semaglutide, for 68 weeks.
- It does not say anything about cagrilintide with retatrutide or tirzepatide, because no trial of those combinations has been published.
- It does not say what anyone should take. These are counts of what people wrote, from people who chose to write. Nobody's vial was tested and nobody's weight was checked.
Latest research
*As of September 2026.* The newest paper we hold is a pharmacokinetics study showing that kidney or liver impairment did not change how the body handles a single dose of cagrilintide 5. Secondary analyses of REDEFINE 1 continue to be published. The fixed-dose combination with semaglutide remains investigational: cagrilintide is not an approved medicine anywhere, alone or combined.
The whole file in three lines: the trials climbed to 2.4 mg with semaglutide; the people we read sit at half a milligram with retatrutide or tirzepatide; and the word they share is fatigue.
ZyraTrack is a research and education tool. We never sell or source compounds, never recommend doses, and refuse sourcing questions. If you use anything discussed here, that is between you and a clinician; our job is only to make the numbers around it honest.