Novo Nordisk said it is cutting supplies of some doses of its popular obesity drug in the US as it struggles to keep up with growing demand.
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Novo Nordiskhigh dose experiment obesity pills helped overweight or obese adults lose about 15% of their body weight, according to new research End-stage clinical trial results.
The Danish company presents data at a diabetes conference on Sunday. Novo Nordisk told Reuters it plans to submit to Food and Drug Administration drug approval later this year.
Novo Nordisk is fighting to maintain its dominant position in Booming weight loss drug market EQUAL New competitor alike Eli Lilly And Pfizer develop their own effective treatments.
Novo Nordisk’s pill is an oral version of semaglutide, the active ingredient in the company’s blockbuster weight loss injections Ozempic and Wegovy. Semaglutide mimics a hormone produced in the gut called GLP-1, which signals the brain when a person is full.
Novo Nordisk already has an FDA-approved oral semaglutide, marketed under the brand name Rybelsus for the treatment of type 2 diabetes. But the highest dose of Rybelsus is 14 milligrams, while the company’s experimental slimming drug has a much larger dosage of 50 milligrams.
The phase three trial followed 667 obese and overweight adults without type 2 diabetes.
According to Novo Nordisk, patients who took 50 milligrams of the drug once a day for 68 weeks lost an average of 15.1% weight when they used it along with diet and physical activity. This compared with 2.4% in patients taking placebo.
About 85% of patients taking the drug lost at least 5% of their body weight, while only 26% of those taking a placebo did.
The weight loss also resulted in “improvements in physical performance, allowing participants to have an improved quality of life for daily activities,” Dr. Filip Knopan endocrinology professor at the University of Copenhagen, who carried out the study, said in a statement.
New data suggests that the high-dose pill could be as effective as Novo Nordisk’s weekly Wegovy injection, which also results in approximately 15% weight loss after 68 weeks.
But a pill will serve as a much more convenient way to treat obesity.
Knop said making the drug available to the public would “enable those who struggle to lose weight with diet and physical activity alone to use this effective drug in a way that works best for them.” .”
Other companies are also developing oral weight loss treatments to appeal to people who don’t want weekly injections.
Overweight or obese patients taking Eli Lilly’s experimental drug orforglipron lost 14.7% of their body weight after 36 weeks, according to mid-term clinical trial results the company announced Friday.
Pfizer is also developing its own weight loss drug called danuglipron that patients take twice a day.
But the pharmaceutical giant on Monday said it would stop growing its other experimental oral drug, lotigliprondue to elevated liver enzymes in the patient.
Companies began to focus more on the weight loss industry after Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic and Wegovy made national headlines in recent years.
Social media influencers, Hollywood celebrities and even tech billionaires Elon Musk reported using common injections to remove unwanted weight.
That popularity has caused widespread shortages and an increase cheaper fakes of the drug.
Shortages and other factors such as high out-of-pocket costs without insurance or unpleasant side effects have forced some people to stop taking Ozempic or Wegovy. Many users have complain Uncontrollable weight gain.
More than two-fifths of adults are obese, according to reports National Institutes of Health. About one in 11 adults is severely obese.
