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A routine blood test shows how much. RNA shows which instructions your immune cells are following.

Every moment, millions of immune cells are protecting and repairing you, following instructions written in your genes. The Inflammation Compass reads those instructions from one blood sample, so you and your clinician can see which parts of your inflammation system move during GLP-1 therapy.

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Your genes stay the same for life.
Which ones your immune cells use changes every day.

Think of your immune cells as workers following instructions. Each instruction is a gene, and when a cell uses one, it makes short working copies of it, called RNA.

Your sample is collected into a tube with a preserving liquid that keeps everything in place from the moment it leaves your arm. In the lab, RNA sequencing reads millions of those copies and matches each one to the gene it came from. Counting them shows which instructions your immune cells were carrying out when your sample was taken.

A routine test and an RNA test
answer different questions.

Both are useful. They measure different things, so they work best read together.

What it measures
Routine blood test How much of a protein, fat, sugar or hormone is circulating, or how many of each kind of cell there are.
Inflammation Compass Which genes your immune cells were using when your sample was taken, read from the working copies they make, called RNA.
The time it reflects
Routine blood test It depends on the marker: about a day for hs-CRP, about three months for A1c, minutes to hours for a cytokine such as IL-6.
Inflammation Compass The instructions your immune cells were carrying out when the sample left your arm. Gene programs build over hours, while circulating cytokines rise and fall within minutes to hours.
Which part of the system
Routine blood test hs-CRP shows that inflammation changed somewhere. It wasn’t designed to show which part of your inflammation system changed.
Inflammation Compass Six readings, three for the signals that start a response and three for the signals that end it, built from 38 pathways.
Cells
Routine blood test A blood count gives cell numbers without describing their activity.
Inflammation Compass An estimate of your immune cell mix, made from the same RNA, beside readings of what those cells are doing.
On GLP-1 therapy
Routine blood test Shows that weight changed, A1c fell or hs-CRP fell, and your prescriber relies on these results.
Inflammation Compass Shows which readings moved from one sample to the next, and which stayed about the same, to read beside those results.

Six readings, each with a job,
compared with people measured the same way.

Your report groups 38 pathways, groups of genes that work together on one job, into six readings. Activation Level, Targeted Defense and Where the Fast Response Is Working follow the signals that start a response. Resolution Level, Regulatory Cells & Repair Signals and Clean-up & Rebuilding follow the signals that end it.

  1. Your Bearing

    Where each reading sits in this sample: within its reference range, at its edge, below it or above it. The reference group is people whose blood was measured the same way.

  2. Your Course

    From your second sample, which readings moved and which stayed about the same. A reading is marked as moved only when the shift is bigger than ordinary day-to-day variation.

  3. Your Map

    Your Activation Level and Resolution Level from every sample, so the path you’ve taken runs across the page, with the reference group drawn around it as the galaxy.

  4. Immune cell mix

    An estimate, made from the same RNA, of the share of each kind of immune cell in your sample. It doesn’t replace a blood count.

See what the report includes

When the scale and your labs hold still,
a sample can still show what moved.

  • During a plateau

    Weight can hold steady for weeks while routine panels stay about the same. A sample then shows which of your six readings moved since the last one and which didn’t, alongside your weight and labs.

  • Before and after a taper

    A sample at maintenance gives later samples a point of comparison. Samples after a clinician-guided taper or stop show which readings moved and which stayed about the same. Research on weight loss after surgery and diet found that fat tissue retains a memory of obesity; whether the same happens after GLP-1 withdrawal has not been tested.2

What a change means is for you and your clinician to weigh, with what you know about your own life around each sample.

What it
can't tell you.

The Inflammation Compass shows what was measured in your blood at one moment. It can’t show what caused a result or a change, or where in your body inflammation is taking place, and it doesn’t show whether a medication is working or is safe. It doesn’t diagnose, rule out or predict any disease.

Your immune cell mix is an estimate made from RNA and doesn’t replace a blood count. Decisions about starting, adjusting or stopping a medication stay with your prescriber.

Common questions about RNA testing

What is RNA testing?

Your DNA is a fixed set of instructions you carry from birth. At any moment, each cell is using only some of them, and when a cell uses a gene it makes working copies of it, called RNA. The Inflammation Compass counts those copies in your immune cells, so it shows which instructions were in use when your sample was taken. That is why results can change from one sample to the next.

How is it different from a regular blood test?

A regular blood test measures what is circulating, such as proteins, fats and hormones, or counts cells. The Inflammation Compass reads which genes your immune cells are using, from the signals that start a response to the signals that end it. It adds to the labs your prescriber orders and doesn’t replace them.

What can it show while I’m on GLP-1 therapy?

It shows where each of your six readings sits against the reference group, people whose blood was measured the same way, and from your second sample, which readings moved and by how much. It doesn’t show whether the medication is working. In SELECT, hs-CRP fell before major weight loss and fell even in participants who did not lose weight; hs-CRP shows that inflammation changed, and the six readings show which parts of your inflammation system moved.

Is this a DNA test?

No. A DNA test reads the instructions you were born with. This test reads RNA, which shows the genes your immune cells were using when the sample was taken. It reports nothing about ancestry or inherited conditions.

Can I take it if I’m on Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro or Zepbound?

Yes. The test reads your immune cells, not the medication, so it can be taken by people on any GLP-1 medication, including semaglutide (Ozempic, Wegovy) and tirzepatide (Mounjaro, Zepbound). It doesn’t measure drug levels.

The SELECT result is from Plutzky and colleagues.1 In one study of people with type 2 diabetes, the GLP-1 receptor gene was barely active in circulating white blood cells.3 How GLP-1 medicines reach the immune system is still being worked out.

Read more
about GLP-1 therapy.

Your personal baseline starts with your first sample.

Each later sample shows which readings moved, by how much, and which stayed about the same.

Reserve your spot GLP-1 biomarkers
Sources and further reading

References

1. Plutzky J, et al. (2026) — Effect of semaglutide on the inflammatory biomarker high-sensitivity CRP in patients with established cardiovascular disease and overweight or obesity in SELECT: a prespecified secondary analysis. Circulation. 154(11):976–991. doi:10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.125.074482. PMID 42610271.
2. Hinte LC, et al. (2024) — Adipose tissue retains an epigenetic memory of obesity after weight loss. Nature. 636:457–465. doi:10.1038/s41586-024-08165-7. PMID 39558077.
3. Zobel EH, et al. (2021) — Effect of liraglutide on expression of inflammatory genes in type 2 diabetes. Sci Rep. 11(1):18522. doi:10.1038/s41598-021-97967-0. PMID 34535716.