Wegovy Pill Continues Weight Loss After Patients Switch From Injectables

Overview

• Data presented Wednesday at the EASD conference in Milan from a 194-patient real-world study compiled with telehealth firm Ro showed a mean 4.1% body-weight reduction, about 4 kg, in the three months after patients switched from weekly injectable GLP-1 drugs to daily oral semaglutide.
• The share of participants classified as clinically obese fell from 87.1% to 65.5% and nearly 41% of patients lost at least 5% of body weight within three months.
• The study was observational and partly based on patient self-reports, so the findings demonstrate real-world effectiveness but do not prove that the pill caused the weight loss in the way a randomized trial can.
• The cohort included people who switched from multiple injectables, including Novo’s Wegovy and Lilly’s Zepbound, and Novo has already launched the oral Wegovy in the U.S., UK, Germany and the UAE.
• Commercially, oral semaglutide now represents about one-third of U.S. obesity prescriptions with Novo capturing more than 80% of new oral starts, a shift that could ease dosing barriers for patients and reshape competition in a market analysts expect may top $100 billion by the end of the decade.