LibrarianMeg said:

Read four things before the headline number.

I read this differently from LibrarianMeg, on substance rather than tone. 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.

Worth separating that from the trial evidence, which this thread keeps folding into the same question. They behave differently and the advice does not transfer.

The figures, for anyone assembling their own picture. A quick sanity check on any figure quoted here: is it mean or median, is it intention-to-treat or completers, and what was the comparator. Three questions, and they resolve most disagreements in these threads.

Dr.CardioMD said:

The "earlier than weight loss explains" argument is weaker than this thread makes it sound.

Adding the part of the answer the thread has not reached. 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.

A narrower follow-up, since the general answer is now clear:

How to read a result like this without either dismissing it or over-reading it, since the summaries all read like press releases?

Reporting back.

Follow-up: I read the paper rather than the summary and the qualifier I was missing was in the second paragraph of the results.