Posts Tagged ‘semaglutide’

Was the multi-million dollar spend by Hims & Hers on a Super Bowl ad the last gasp of a doomed business? Or was it a clever play for regulatory latitude that could keep them going?  Conventional wisdom suggests that GLP-1 compounders should be nearing the end of their rope. But some political observers think they […]

Novo Nordisk and Lilly reported on their business results this week for the final quarter of 2024. These reports brought clarity on a number of points, but to us, one thing stands out. We are moving from euphoria and hype about limitless possibilities in obesity to the realities of market competition and incremental progress. Sales […]

A new paper in JAMA Network Open documents just how dizzy the pace of change in prescribing for obesity care has been in the last seven years. Prescriptions for obesity medicines have doubled. Phentermine prescribing has grown – it’s generic, cheap, and effective. Even now, it accounts for almost half of obesity medicine prescriptions. But […]

FDA yesterday approved Ozempic (semaglutide) to prevent kidney failure and death in persons with type 2 diabetes and chronic kidney disease. This fits with one of the five trends for this year: the steady expansion of health benefits for advanced medicines used in obesity and diabetes. But note that this approval covers the use of […]

The race to innovate beyond semaglutide and tirzepatide for obesity can be utterly confusing. More than a hundred new drugs are in various stages of development and analysts expect more than a dozen to be launched within the next five years. But right now, all we have are tantalizing – and sometimes disappointing – results […]

Last week we got another glimpse of incremental progress in coverage for obesity medicines in health insurance plans. CMS announced that Medicare drug plans (Part D or Medicare Advantage) could now cover Zepbound (tirzepatide) when doctors prescribe it to patients for obesity and sleep apnea. This is not the opening of floodgates. It is movement […]

The ongoing debate about the clinical definition of obesity is soon to get more intense. But already, it tells us pretty clearly that obesity is defined by more than excess weight. New research in Nature Medicine comes at this subject from an entirely different direction. Using proteomics, Lasse Maretty and colleagues find that the effects […]

Only a little more than a month ago, Novo Nordisk told Reuters that yes, they really did expect their next generation obesity drug, CagriSema, to deliver 25% weight loss in clinical trials. Then Thursday, the company disclosed topline results of 23% weight loss. Almost immediately, company’s stock price plunged by more than 20% – a […]

Bragging rights. Yesterday, Lilly claimed them for its obesity medicine, the Zepbound brand of tirzepatide. The company announced topline results from a head-to-head trial of tirzepatide vs semaglutide for weight loss in persons with obesity or overweight and at least one obesity-related complication. It should be no surprise that tirzepatide won this narrowly-defined contest. In […]

FDA told a Federal judge yesterday that the agency isn’t yet sure whether there’s still a shortage of tirzepatide in the U.S. The agency needs more time to think about this. So for now, we have a stalemate on compounding of both semaglutide and tirzepatide. They are still on the FDA shortage list and compounders […]