A pair of new drugs offer something that most Americans desperately want: a way to lose weight.
In clinical trials, Novo Nordisk’s DK:NOVO.B Wegovy helped adults lose about 15% of their body weight. The drug, which received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration last year, had such a successful launch that it’s now in short supply. Eli Lilly’s LLY tirzepatide, meanwhile, is still in clinical trials, but data from a Phase 3 trial showed that people taking the drug lost up to 22% of their body weight.In clinical trials, Novo Nordisk’s NOVO.
“If we have a drug that is Wegovy that is for weight loss, and it’s not covered, but we have a drug that is Ozempic, and it’s for diabetes, the exact same drug is covered,” said Holly Lofton, a physician who works in obesity medicine at NYU Langone Health in New York City. “There’s not a drug issue. There’s a ‘we don’t want to treat this patient’ issue. That comes from stigma or discrimination or lack of knowledge about obesity as a condition.
Ted Kyle runs ConscienHealth, an obesity advocacy organization. “That momentum comes from people having a better understanding of what we’re dealing with,” he said. “Ten years ago, policymakers would come out and say, ‘Fat people need to eat less and move more.’”Until recently, the medical community often blamed obesity on a lack of willpower or a mismatch between calories consumed and calories burned.
The newest class of weight-management drugs — as well as therapies like Qsymia and Currax Pharmaceuticals’ Contrave, which were approved about a decade ago — are not stimulants. Tirzepatide and Wegovy, which is the first new weight-management drug to have been approved since 2014, are what are known as glucagon-like peptide-1 agonists.
Novo expects to have the first batch of data from its Phase 3 clinical trial — which will show whether Wegovy can reduce the risk of heart disease and stroke — by mid-2023, according to a spokesperson. Lilly, which is expected to soon file for FDA approval of tirzepatide as a weight-management therapy, also plans to launch a Phase 3 trial later this year to evaluate whether its drug can reduce morbidity and mortality.