Ozempic maker says its Wegovy drug can cut risk of serious heart problems
Novo Nordisk on Saturday said the heart protective benefits of its wildly popular Wegovy obesity treatment are due to more than weight loss alone, according to new data presented at a major medical meeting on Saturday.
Early data from the Danish drugmaker’s Select trial released in August demonstrated that Wegovy, which has been shown to help patients lose an average of 15 per cent of their weight, also reduced incidence of heart attack, stroke or death from heart disease by 20 per cent.
Full results from the study, presented at the American Heart Association annual scientific meeting in Philadelphia in front of a standing room only crowd and published in the New England Journal of Medicine, suggest the drug has other beneficial effects beyond the known health benefits from losing weight.
The heart risk difference between patients who received Wegovy, known chemically as semaglutide, and those on placebo began to appear almost immediately after starting treatment, researchers said.
In the study of overweight and obese patients based on body mass index who had preexisting heart disease but not diabetes, Wegovy reduced the risk of non-fatal heart attack by 28 per cent, non-fatal stroke by seven per cent and heart-related death by 15 per cent compared to a placebo.
Given that patients had not started losing weight when the cardiovascular benefits first appeared suggests the heart protection was not purely the result of weight loss, Novo said.
Dr Chad Weldy, a cardiologist at Stanford University, said on the sidelines of the conference that it was important to note that the trial did not study how semaglutide might stop heart disease from happening and only looked at how to stop it from getting worse.
Despite that, the size
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