April 8, 2024 — Obesity research never rests, it seems. Over the weekend, at the American College of Cardiology annual meeting and in the New England Journal of Medicine, we got a third confirmation of the benefit that semaglutide delivers to patients with obesity and heart failure. Specifically, this is about heart failure with preserved ejection fraction – HFpEF. […]
April 2, 2024 — We were hopeful. Shortly after launch, it seemed like Lilly was keeping up with the demand for Zepbound – the tirzepatide brand they’re selling for obesity. But it turns out that the overwhelming need for effective obesity medicine is outstripping the supply that both Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk can offer. Lilly told reporters on […]
March 28, 2024 — A new economic analysis in JAMA Network Open brings unsurprising news: manufacturing costs for GLP-1 agonists are a tiny fraction of the price for these important medicines. This is always the case for innovative prescription drugs that must recover billions of dollars of development costs in order to be profitable. The response from policy makers […]
March 22, 2024 — This is a striking change. Until now, the steadfast refusal of CMS to allow coverage of any obesity medicine by Medicare has been unwavering. Then two weeks ago, FDA granted a new indication for semaglutide for persons with both heart disease and obesity to prevent heart attacks, strokes, and deaths. Now CMS says it’s A-OK […]
March 18, 2024 — Hear that rumble? Nope, it not the latest SpaceX launch. It is the roar of growing demand for obesity care in the U.S. Two pieces of news in the last week remind us of how steep the upward line of growth in obesity treatment is right now. To help it scale up their reach to […]
March 9, 2024 — It’s official. FDA now says that semaglutide, in doses used to treat obesity, can prevent heart attacks, strokes, and deaths in persons with cardiovascular disease and overweight or obesity. This is nothing short of the dawn of a new era in obesity treatment. FDA Division Director John Sharretts said it clearly: “This patient population has […]
February 17, 2024 — Reporting for Reuters, Robin Respaut and Chad Terhune tell us that prescription data in the U.S. reveals increasing use of semaglutide for obesity in adolescents. Does this signal a huge surge in pediatric obesity treatment? Or merely a small uptick from almost negligible access to care? That all depends on the story you want to […]
February 7, 2024 — Let’s be clear from the start. Hype about “weight loss” drugs is exquisitely unhelpful. This is because weight loss is only an acute effect of new medicines that act on GLP-1 receptors and related pathways that influence obesity. The real need for these medicines is to control a whole range of chronic health problems that […]
January 31, 2024 — Obesity is the most prevalent chronic disease in America, so you might think that prescriptions for obesity medicines are relatively common – but only if you are unfamiliar with prevailing attitudes about these medicines. Because in fact, even in a large health system known for excellent care in cardiometabolic health, these prescriptions are rather rare. […]
January 30, 2024 — It created quite a stir last week when Epic Research published an analysis suggesting that weight regain in the real world does not look the same as a placebo-controlled trial. After all, regain is quite an important subject. Obesity is clearly a chronic disease, requiring chronic care. But lots of people try to avoid this […]
