Novo Nordisk says high-dose obesity pill results in 15% weight reduction

Novo Nordisk‘s high-dose experimental obesity pill helped chubby or obese adults lose around 15% of their body weight, in response to recent late-stage clinical trial results.

The Danish company presented the information at a diabetes conference Sunday. Novo Nordisk told Reuters it plans to file for Food and Drug Administration approval of the drug later this yr.

Novo Nordisk is fighting to take care of its dominant position within the booming weight reduction drug market as recent competitors corresponding to Eli Lilly and Pfizer develop their very own effective treatments.

Novo Nordisk’s pill is an oral version of semaglutide, the lively ingredient in the corporate’s blockbuster weight reduction injections Ozempic and Wegovy. Semaglutide mimics a hormone produced within the gut called GLP-1, which signals to the brain when an individual is full. 

Novo Nordisk already has an FDA-approved oral semaglutide, which is marketed under the brand name Rybelsus for the treatment of type 2 diabetes. But the best dose of Rybelsus is 14 milligrams, while the corporate’s experimental obesity pill has a far larger dose of fifty milligrams. 

The phase three trial followed 667 obese and chubby adults who didn’t have Type 2 diabetes.

Patients who took 50 milligrams of the pill once a day for 68 weeks saw a mean weight reduction of 15.1%, after they used it alongside weight loss plan and physical activity, in response to Novo Nordisk. That is compared with a 2.4% weight reduction for patients who took a placebo.

Around 85% of patients who took the pill lost not less than 5% of their body weight, while only 26% of those that received the placebo did. 

The load loss also led to “improvements in physical functioning, allowing participants to have an improved quality of life for on a regular basis activities,” Dr. Filip Knop, an endocrinology professor on the University of Copenhagen who worked on the study, said in a press release. 

The brand new data suggests that the high-dose pill could also be as effective as Novo Nordisk’s weekly Wegovy injection, which also resulted in roughly 15% weight reduction after 68 weeks. 

But a pill would function a much more convenient option to treat obesity. 

Knop said offering the pill to the general public would “allow individuals who struggle to drop some pounds with weight loss plan and physical activity alone to take this effective medication in a way that most closely fits them.”

Other firms are also developing oral weight reduction treatments to appeal to those that don’t desire weekly injections. 

Obese or obese patients who took Eli Lilly’s experimental pill orforglipron lost 14.7% of their body weight after 36 weeks, in response to midstage clinical trial results the corporate released Friday. 

Pfizer can be developing its own weight reduction pill, called danuglipron, which patients take twice a day.

However the pharmaceutical giant on Monday said it will stop developing its other experimental oral drug, lotiglipron, as a result of elevated liver enzymes in patients.

Corporations began focusing more on the burden loss industry after Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic and Wegovy catapulted to the national highlight lately.  

Social media influencers, Hollywood celebrities and even billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk have reportedly used the favored injections to do away with unwanted weight. 

That popularity sparked widespread shortages and a rise in cheaper knockoffs of the drugs. 

Shortages and other aspects corresponding to high out-of-pocket costs without insurance or unpleasant unwanted side effects have forced some people to stop taking Ozempic or Wegovy. Many users have complained of a rebound in weight that is difficult to regulate.

Greater than two in five adults have obesity, in response to the National Institutes of Health. About one in 11 adults have severe obesity.