A mixture image shows an injection pen of Zepbound, Eli Lilly’s weight reduction drug, and boxes of Wegovy, made by Novo Nordisk.
Reuters
Eli Lilly on Wednesday said its obesity drug Zepbound led to more weight reduction than its principal rival, Novo Nordisk‘s Wegovy, in the primary head-to-head clinical trial on the weekly injections.
The findings suggest Zepbound could also be a superior treatment for weight reduction, helping obese or chubby patients lose 20.2% of their body weight, or roughly 50 kilos, on average after 72 weeks within the phase three trial. Meanwhile, Wegovy helped people lose 13.7% of their weight, or about 33 kilos, on average after the identical time period.
Eli Lilly said Zepbound provided a 47% higher relative weight reduction compared with Wegovy within the trial. The corporate added that greater than 31% of individuals taking Zepbound lost not less than 1 / 4 of their body weight, in comparison with nearly 16% of those on Wegovy who lost that much weight.
Separate studies on the drugs, together with a recent head-to-head evaluation of health records, have similarly implied that Zepbound outperforms Wegovy when it comes to weight reduction. A late-stage study on Zepbound showed that it helped patients lose greater than 22% of their weight on average over 72 weeks, while a separate study on Wegovy showed that it led to 15% weight reduction on average over 68 weeks.
However the Wednesday data appears to be essentially the most concrete evidence of Zepbound’s edge, because the trial randomly assigned 751 patients to receive the utmost dose of either drug. The study specifically followed patients who were obese or chubby with not less than one weight-related medical condition, not including diabetes.
“Given the increased interest around obesity medications, we conducted this study to assist health care providers and patients make informed decisions about treatment selection,” Dr. Leonard Glass, senior vp of world medical affairs at Eli Lilly Cardiometabolic Health, said in a release.
Eli Lilly continues to be evaluating the outcomes, which it plans to publish in a peer-reviewed journal and present at a medical meeting next 12 months.
Essentially the most common uncomfortable side effects of each drugs were gastrointestinal and customarily mild to moderate in severity.
Zepbound’s greater weight reduction is a big advantage for Eli Lilly, which is competing with Novo Nordisk for a bigger share of the booming weight reduction drug market. Some analysts expect the space to be price $150 billion a 12 months by the early 2030s.
Wegovy entered the market around two years before Zepbound, which won approval within the U.S. in late 2023. Still, some analysts imagine Zepbound has a robust shot of becoming the best-selling drug of all time after more years available on the market.
Data analytics firm GlobalData forecasts Zepbound will generate $27.2 billion in annual sales by 2030 and Wegovy will book $18.7 billion in annual revenue by the identical 12 months, in response to data from November.
Demand has far outstripped supply for Zepbound, Wegovy and their diabetes counterparts over the past 12 months, forcing Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk to pour billions into expanding their manufacturing capability for the injections. Those efforts seem like paying off, because the Food and Drug Administration now lists all doses of those treatments as “available” on its drug shortage database.
Still, some patients struggle to access the drugs on account of the spotty insurance coverage of weight reduction treatments within the U.S. Without insurance or other savings, Zepbound and Wegovy each cost around $1,000 per 30 days.
The treatments work in a different way.
Zepbound tamps down appetite and regulates blood sugar by activating two gut hormones, called GIP and GLP-1. Wegovy prompts GLP-1 but doesn’t goal GIP, which some researchers say may affect how the body breaks down sugar and fat.
