Novo Nordisk this week (August 20) revealed that semaglutide – the glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonist (GLP-1 RA) in its weight loss injection Wegovy and diabetes drug Ozempic – has been “proven to reduce the risk of cardiovascular events by 20-26%”.
These findings on the “cardiovascular protective benefits of Wegovy and Ozempic” have been released ahead of the company presenting new data at the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) Congress in Spain next week, it said.
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Novo Nordisk will present this “new data substantiating the unique range of benefits semaglutide has on people with heart and kidney disease, as demonstrated in both clinical trials and in the real world”, executive vice president Ludovic Helfgott explained.
“For people living with diabetes and obesity, heart disease is one of the biggest threats that could change a person’s life in an instant,” he said.
Read more: ‘Illegal or unregulated’: 18k weight loss items seized in 18 months
But he added that these findings could mean that those taking Wegovy or Ozempic could face “fewer hospitalisations, heart attacks, strokes and deaths”.
“Semaglutide is unrivalled in the GLP-1 class,” he claimed.
Mounjaro price hike
It comes after Mounjaro manufacturer Eli Lilly last week revealed that it will hike the UK price of the drug from September to align it with the cost to other countries – although it has now invited pharmacies to participate in a “Mounjaro rebate scheme”.
And this week, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) published guidance on a “shake-up” of type 2 diabetes care, recommending that some patients access GLP-1 RAs earlier in their treatment.
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With the use of weight loss jabs continuing to grow in the UK, NICE also published updated guidance earlier this month calling for healthcare services to provide “tailored action plans” for patients for “at least a year” after stopping the medication.
Meanwhile, Novo Nordisk revealed in June that it would submit an application for a new 7.2mg Wegovy injection to the UK regulator “shortly”, after it achieved “greater weight loss than previously seen” with “comparable safety”.
And new data this week revealed that the UK border force seized more than 18,000 “illegal or unregulated” weight loss products between January 2024 and June this year.
