Compounded Semaglutide Is Slow to Fade Despite FDA
Monday, Reuters reported that Novo Nordisk has been seeing a bump in prescription volume for Wegovy because FDA had ordered an end to the widespread sale of compounded semaglutide on May 22. New Wegovy prescriptions were up 33%, the report said. But they went on to say that investors were looking for more assurance of future growth.
Yesterday, that expectation turned to disappointment as the company announced it was trimming sales forecasts because the hope that compounded semaglutide would fade quickly from the marketplace had turned out to be wishful thinking.
Novo’s stock price dropped 22%. With masterful understatement, Maziar Mike Doustdar, who will take over as CEO next week, said: “I don’t like it.”
A Million People
Outgoing CEO Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen summed up the situation with persistent compounded semaglutide and company forecasts:
“Despite the fact that it is now illegal … it’s still happening. And that’s one of the assumptions in the prior guidance, that it would be reduced significantly. And we see, actually, that is actually the same volume as we saw earlier in the year, around a million patients using a compounded product.”
Not a Huge Surprise
Should anyone be surprised that compounders are not fading gently into the good night? Probably not.
Back in February, we said the outlook for such a scenario was “a little foggy.” A million people taking semaglutide for less than $200 per month are apparently not happy to pay more than twice as much for real Wegovy. Making it worse, insurers are doing their best to push the costs away from themselves.
So we are now in a bad place. People who need access to quality medicines don’t have it. Some of them are left to navigate a messy marketplace that includes some dubious offerings.
This is a mess that will require more than legal threats to resolve.
Click here, here, and here for more on this situation.
Fading Sun at Castel dell’Ovo, Naples, photograph by Ted Kyle / ConscienHealth
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July 30, 2025
