Written by Eleanor Rice

Heart failure patients with diabetes may lose weight with Wegovy, but may still benefit from cardiovascular benefits, study finds

People with obesity-related heart failure or diabetes can derive significant heart-health benefits from the popular obesity drug Wegoby, even without significantly reducing their dosage, according to a new study.

Patients with common types of heart failure and type 2 diabetes who took Novo Nordisk’s Wigovy for one year experienced fewer symptoms related to heart failure, according to study results published Saturday in the New England Journal of Medicine. His physical limitations have been significantly improved. This improvement was comparable to the effect seen in patients without diabetes in a comparable trial published last year — Wegovy’s weight loss effect was approximately 40% higher in patients with diabetes than in participants in earlier trials. Despite the fact that it was % lower.

Dr. Mikhail Kosiborod, a cardiologist at St. Luke’s Mid-America Heart, said the study results show that while weight loss may be an important factor behind Wigoby’s heart failure effects, “This clearly suggests that ‘mechanisms beyond reduction’ are also very likely to play an important role,” he said. The institute and the study’s lead author told MarketWatch. Wigoby and Novo Semaglutide, the active ingredient in his Nordisk diabetes drug Ozempic, has a direct effect on congestion and appears to significantly reduce inflammation, Kociborod said.

“It’s not all about weight loss,” he said, adding that semaglutide is “fundamentally changing” the disease process.

The results support the drug’s potential to “enhance cardiovascular care beyond weight management in patients with obesity and common heart failure, which can significantly impact daily life,” Novo Nordisk said. said in a statement. The participants in this study had heart failure with preserved ejection fraction, which is increasingly prevalent and often associated with obesity.

The results of the heart failure study come as anti-obesity drugs are being investigated for a wide range of uses far beyond weight loss. Eli Lilly & Co. (LLY) is researching tirzepatide, the active ingredient in the weight loss drug Zepbound, for obstructive sleep apnea, heart failure, fatty liver disease, and other conditions. Obesity drugs are being studied for diseases ranging from Alzheimer’s disease to osteoarthritis to substance abuse. Lixisenatide, an older GLP-1 drug for diabetes, may slow the progression of Parkinson’s disease symptoms, according to research published earlier this week. And last month, the Food and Drug Administration approved the use of Wegovy to reduce the risk of serious heart disease in people who are obese or overweight.

A growing list of potential uses for obesity drugs is raising hopes for expanded insurance coverage and boosting analysts’ sales forecasts. Total sales of GLP-1 drugs such as Wegovy and related medicines are expected to exceed $164 billion in 2032, up from $37.9 billion in 2023, according to Visible Alpha’s consensus estimates.

In the new semaglutide study, patients who took Wegovy lost an average of 9.8% of their weight after one year, compared to 3.4% for those who took a placebo. Patients who took Wegovy also saw significant improvements in their six-minute walk distance and blood pressure, among other things, and were less likely to be hospitalized or have an emergency visit for heart failure than those who took a placebo. It got lower.

The results of this study are attributable, in part, to the fact that diabetic heart failure patients tend to have more severe disease and generally lose strength, and respond differently to treatment than patients in earlier non-diabetic studies. This is shocking because there was some reason to believe it could be different. Kosiborod says that taking anti-obesity drugs can help people lose weight.

People with diabetes are more likely to take a class of drugs called SGLT2 inhibitors, which can reduce the risk of heart failure. However, the study found that patients taking SGLT2 inhibitors had about the same degree of heart failure benefit as patients not taking the drugs, Kosiborod said. This suggests that semaglutide and SGLT2 inhibitors have complementary mechanisms of effect and could be used as combination therapy for patients with heart failure, he said.

Novo Nordisk’s American Depositary Receipts (NVOs) are up 22% since the beginning of the year, while the S&P 500 index is up 9%.

– Eleanor Rice

This content was generated by MarketWatch, a Dow Jones Company. MarketWatch is published independently of the Dow Jones Newswires and the Wall Street Journal.

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04/06/24 1616ET

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