This drug only helped people whose belly fat went down a lot—so if your belly fat didn’t shrink, we don’t know if it would help your muscles.

This drug didn’t just make muscles less fatty—it also made them bigger in size, adding about half a square inch of lean muscle in the core area after six months.

When belly fat went down in these patients, their trunk muscles also got less fatty—suggesting the same process might be cleaning up both types of fat.

HIV patients with belly fat who responded to tesamorelin saw better lean muscle quality in their abdominal and rectus muscles, with improvements of 1.39 and 1.78 units respectively compared to placebo after 26 weeks.

HIV patients with belly fat who responded to tesamorelin had bigger rectus and psoas muscles (0.44 and 0.46 cm² larger) compared to placebo after 26 weeks.

For HIV patients with belly fat on tesamorelin, losing belly fat was linked to better muscle density in their abdominal and rectus muscles.