How long does Cagrilintide stay in your system?
Cagrilintide has a published half-life of 159 to 195 hours. By the standard pharmacology rule of thumb, a drug is about 97% eliminated after roughly five half-lives, which here works out to between 33.1 and 40.6 days (4.7 to 5.8 weeks). That range spans the dose cohorts of the trial that measured it.
Source: Enebo et al., Lancet 2021 (PMID 33894838) · Peer-reviewed · measured: subcutaneous · dataset reviewed September 23, 2026
What is the half-life of Cagrilintide?
Cagrilintide's half-life of 159 to 195 hours, roughly 6.6 to 8.1 days, comes from a phase 1b trial published in The Lancet in 2021, measured after subcutaneous injection. Cagrilintide is a long-acting, lipidated analogue of amylin, the hormone co-secreted with insulin that helps end meals, and it is the amylin half of the CagriSema combination with semaglutide.
Lipidation, attaching a fatty acid, is what gives cagrilintide its long half-life, the same broad strategy behind semaglutide. That matters for CagriSema: the trial that measured cagrilintide at 159 to 195 hours measured semaglutide at 145 to 165 hours, so the two components of the combination decline on broadly similar timescales.
How much Cagrilintide is left after each half-life?
Each half-life removes half of whatever is left, so the percentages are pure arithmetic and the same for any compound; only the clock changes. For Cagrilintide, one half-life is 6.6 to 8.1 days. The rows below run that forward for a single amount with nothing added.
| Half-lives elapsed | Time elapsed | Remaining | Cleared |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 6.6 to 8.1 days | 50% | 50% |
| 2 | 13.3 to 16.3 days | 25% | 75% |
| 3 | 19.9 to 24.4 days (2.8 to 3.5 weeks) | 12.5% | 87.5% |
| 4 | 26.5 to 32.5 days (3.8 to 4.6 weeks) | 6.25% | 93.75% |
| 5 | 33.1 to 40.6 days (4.7 to 5.8 weeks) | 3.13% | 96.88% |
| 6 | 39.8 to 48.8 days (5.7 to 7 weeks) | 1.56% | 98.44% |
| 7 | 46.4 to 56.9 days (6.6 to 8.1 weeks) | 0.78% | 99.22% |
Why do the numbers differ between sources?
The range is the honest answer. The trial gave cagrilintide in several dose cohorts, the half-life estimate differed between them, and the median time to peak concentration ran from 24 to 72 hours. Picking a single number from inside that range would imply a precision the data does not have.
The same trial's semaglutide figure agrees with the Ozempic label's approximately 1 week. That cross-check matters, because it shows the trial's methods reproduce a well-established value, which is a reason to trust its cagrilintide estimate as far as it goes.
What does a half-life not tell you?
It does not describe satiety. Cagrilintide's effects on appetite are attributed, in mouse studies, to amylin receptors in the hindbrain and hypothalamus, and how long those central effects last is not something a plasma curve can show.
It also does not tell you about the combination. In CagriSema, cagrilintide and semaglutide are cleared independently on their own curves, and the clinical effect of the pair comes from outcome trials, not from adding half-lives together.
Can you run the numbers yourself?
The estimator applies the same decay arithmetic to any half-life, starting amount and time you enter. It opens with Cagrilintide's published value loaded. Type another figure to see how sensitive the result is to it.
Published value: 159 to 195 hours (Subcutaneous) · Enebo et al., Lancet 2021 (PMID 33894838) · Compound profile
Show the math
What are the limits of this estimate?
Everything above is a single-compartment approximation: one pool of drug, falling by the same fraction in every interval. Real elimination varies with kidney and liver function, body composition, formulation and route, and a published figure describes only the route and the people it was measured in. Many compounds also show a fast distribution phase before the slower elimination the table describes.
A half-life is not a dosing schedule. Labelled intervals come from clinical trials that measured outcomes and tolerability, and nothing on this page suggests when to take, repeat or stop anything. Whether Cagrilintide is out of your system for drug-testing purposes is a different question again. Tests often look for metabolites rather than the parent compound, and the answer depends on the assay, its sensitivity and the sample type, none of which a plasma half-life captures.
FAQ.
Why is cagrilintide's half-life given as a range?
Because it was estimated separately in each dose cohort of the trial that measured it, and the cohorts gave values from 159 to 195 hours. Reporting the full range is more accurate than choosing one number from inside it.
Is cagrilintide's half-life similar to semaglutide's?
Broadly, yes. The same trial measured cagrilintide at 159 to 195 hours and semaglutide at 145 to 165 hours, and the Ozempic label gives semaglutide approximately 1 week. Both are long-acting, lipidated peptides.
Does cagrilintide have an FDA label half-life?
No. Cagrilintide is investigational and has no approved label of its own, so the figure here comes from a peer-reviewed clinical trial. The legal status page covers its current regulatory position.
For what the evidence on Cagrilintide actually shows, read the Cagrilintide profile. For approval and regulatory position, see is Cagrilintide legal. The half-life reference lists every sourced value side by side, including the compounds where a number circulates online with no reliable human data behind it.