The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved Novo Nordisk’s (NVO) weight loss drug Wigovy to reduce the risk of heart attacks and strokes in obese patients. This could make blockbuster drugs available to more patients.

Yahoo Finance Healthcare reporter Anjalee Khemlani has more details in the video above.

For more expert insights and the latest market trends, click here to watch the full episode of Yahoo Finance Live.

Editor’s note: This article was written by Stephanie Mikulich.

video transcript

Julie Hyman: Let’s take a quick look at Novo Nordisk’s stock price. This is the case with US stocks. The FDA has also approved the company’s weight loss and diabetes drug Wegovy for use in cardiovascular risk reduction.

Yahoo Finance’s Anjalee Khemlani brings you the latest news. Therefore, we have expanded our adaptation to this.

Anjali Khemrani: The display has been enlarged. That means the label now includes cardiovascular risk reduction. And Nordisk is free to say that this drug can be used for that purpose.

Novo Nordisk continues its research towards this objective. Then, a little later last year, results showed that the risk of heart disease was reduced by 20%. This includes death, stroke, and heart attack.

So this, of course, opens the door to creating even more prescriptions. And this is especially for overweight patients. I would like to point that out.

Therefore, the target population for this drug remains unchanged. Remember that Wegovy is not a diabetes treatment, but specifically a weight loss drug. That’s Ozempic.

Therefore, it focuses on a very specific subset of the population. Novo Nordisk has been able to do this while, understandably, already facing a labor shortage. So this puts even more pressure on drugs.

And that’s something they have to work on. Also, Eli Lilly follows suit again. They are studying this to lower blood pressure, and a study was recently published showing its benefits.

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And the doctor suggests he may be considering Lilly’s competition to Zepbound, Wegovy, for the same purpose. So they haven’t said anything about it yet. But this basically just set the expectations and the reasons for using these drugs increased and that’s what was set. That’s like blowing up the market for companies.

Josh Lipton: Okay. Anjali played two matches today. A powerful double role.

Anjali Khemrani: Just walked out the door and came back.

Josh Lipton: Thank you, Ange. appreciate.