May 14, 2022 — Yesterday, FDA approved tirzepatide for type 2 diabetes, calling it “an important advance.” The brand name will be Mounjaro. This is the same drug for which its maker, Eli Lilly and Company, announced remarkable results in a phase 3 obesity study barely two weeks ago. It is the first of its kind – a dual […]
May 12, 2022 — Somehow this doesn’t seem right. The list price for for a month’s supply of semaglutide when it’s for diabetes is $892. No matter whether you need a dose of 1 mg, or the new high dose of 2 mg, the price is the same. It goes under the brand name of Ozempic and comes from […]
December 18, 2021 — Novo Nordisk has a problem. Yesterday its stock lost 16 billion dollars from its value. This is because the company is hitting some bumps in its journey through the uncharted territory of obesity care. For more than a decade now, Novo has been investing in a genuine effort to meet a need for better obesity […]
October 20, 2021 — Day by day, the prospects for treating obesity are getting better. Late on Monday, detailed results from the longest study yet of tirzepatide came out in Lancet. This was a study using this new drug in people with type 2 diabetes, but the average BMI of these patients was 33. None of them had a […]
October 8, 2021 — With great gifts come great responsibilities. It doesn’t really matter whether you get this message from biblical sources or Spiderman. The imperative is there. If you have a big platform, you better use it to serve a purpose bigger than yourself. It looks like Queen Latifah and Novo Nordisk might be using their platforms to […]
June 5, 2021 — Experts labeled it as a gamechanger months ago. So it is certainly good news to see semaglutide approved by FDA, now with a brand name, Wegovy. With good reason, people see this new drug as something that can bring radical progress to treating obesity. On average, it’s more effective than other drugs for obesity. Compared […]
December 7, 2020 — Friday marked an important milestone in progress toward better treatments for obesity. Novo Nordisk submitted semaglutide to FDA for approval in treating obesity. So we may see approval for this important new drug in the second half of next year. Why so important? We have two reasons. A Step Forward in Effectiveness The first reason […]
November 10, 2020 — Saxenda (liraglutide) is on the brink of becoming a billion dollar drug for obesity. Yet its effectiveness in obesity is modest. On average, a person taking it might expect that their weight would go down by about eight percent. Of course, some people will have a much bigger benefit. But others will have less or […]
May 14, 2020 — Yesterday the process of a slow reveal began. Novo Nordisk released the first pivotal results in studies of semaglutide for obesity. This new drug, already available for diabetes, has potential to bring us closer to truly effective obesity treatment without surgery. This was merely a first glimpse – topline results from only one of four […]
February 7, 2020 — The decade just past brought quite a bit of change in drugs used to treat obesity. At the beginning of the decade, options were few. Prescribing was almost nil. Now we have five new drugs for obesity. For type 2 diabetes, weight-sparing drugs have taken a dominant role in prescribing. One of those drugs, liraglutide, […]
