No­vo Nordisk's block­buster di­a­betes drug blows the doors off in obe­si­ty, prov­ing high­ly ef­fec­tive in dri­ving weight loss

As the obe­si­ty epi­dem­ic in Amer­i­ca wors­ened through­out the years, many biotechs cropped up hop­ing to de­vel­op weight-loss drugs that would help stem this tide. But now, No­vo Nordisk’s di­a­betes cash cow semaglu­tide is show­ing such star­tling­ly ef­fec­tive re­sults in obe­si­ty that it may have a head start in cor­ner­ing the mar­ket.

In near­ly a 2,000-per­son tri­al, par­tic­i­pants in­ject­ed them­selves with ei­ther semaglu­tide or place­bo for 68 weeks. Pa­tients in the drug arm saw an av­er­age 15% weight loss, com­pared with just 2.4% on place­bo, and al­most a third lost more than 20% of their weight. Re­searchers pub­lished the da­ta Wednes­day in the New Eng­land Jour­nal of Med­i­cine, and all p-val­ues came out to p<0.001.

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