(Bloomberg) –An experimental weight-loss shot from Amgen Inc. — taken less frequently than wildly popular treatments from Eli Lilly & Co. and Novo Nordisk A/S — appears to keep weight off even after patients stop taking it.

Patients given a monthly injection of Amgen's drug, dubbed MariTide, lost up to 14.5% of their body weight in just 12 weeks, according to a small, early-stage study published Monday in the journal Nature Metabolism. And some people kept the weight off for up to 150 days after stopping the drug, findings show.

"That is really a remarkable and distinguishing characteristic of this molecule," Narimon Honarpour, senior vice president of global development at Amgen, said in an interview.

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