United States: The stock price of Novo Nordisk, producer of the highly sought-after weight loss medication Wegovy, went down by 1.1 percent after the publication of a data analysis that demonstrated a competing product, Eli Lilly’s, own treatment, Mounjaro, results in both more and quicker weight loss.
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The analysis appeared in JAMA Internal Medicine, a peer-reviewed medical journal, on Monday.
They used health records and other information regarding its effects on the overweight and obese adults who have undergone a tirzepatide – Lilly’s Mounjaro and Zepbound’s active element – assessment as well as semaglutite, which is the component of Wegovy and another one Ozempic.
As there are no direct randomized controlled trials comparing equally randomized groups of two drugs, researchers utilized patients’ records and information on the dispensed medicine to compare the weight loss patterns for 9,193 Mounjaro users and the same number of users of the similar Ozempic, as Reuters reported.
The participants’ average weight was 242lb, 110 kg on average; slightly over half of the participants had type 2 diabetes.
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Controlling for other patient characteristics, the analysis showed that Mounjaro patients were 76 percent more likely to lose at least 5 percent of their body weight, more than twice as likely to lose at least 10 percent, and more than three times more likely to lose at least 15 percent than Ozempic patients, according to the reports.
What are the companies stating?
As per the statement by Novo Nordisk, “This analysis compared the weight loss outcomes of semaglutide (Ozempic) and tirzepatide (Mounjaro) and did not include Wegovy even though weight loss was the main objective assessed,” as Reuters reported.
It remarked that the only way to determine the efficacy of both weight-loss drugs is through a head-to-head clinical trial in which one medication is tested against another, and it pointed out that no such trial has been conducted so far.
The two drug-making companies, the world’s largest producer of insulin, are the first in the field to market a new weight loss drug that analysts estimate could be worth between USD 100 and USD 150 billion in sales by the early 2030s, as explained by the few analytics.
Both are striving to step up production of their drugs, administered through a once-weekly self-injection pen.
Nevertheless, the researchers pointed out that Ozempic and Mounjaro management are both given to people with type 2 diabetes; about half the participants used the drugs for weight reduction, which influenced the results.