In the heavyweight title match between weight loss meds, we have ourselves a victor.
In the battle between Novo Nordisk’s Semaglutide medications Wegovy and Ozempic and liraglutides Saxenda and Victoza, a new study from the Cleveland Clinic gives the championship belt to Wegovy and Ozempic – with an average weight loss more than double their worthy foes.
The results published in JAMA said that researchers collected weight loss data from 3,389 obese patients who were prescribed either semaglutide or liraglutide. At the end of a year, the semaglutides – Ozempic and Wegovy – produced an average 5.1% reduction in body weight, and liraglutide saw a 2.2% reduction.
Breaking the data down further, the researchers found that the average body weight change amounted to: -12.9% with semaglutide for obesity, -5.9% with semaglutide for Type 2 diabetes, -5.6% with liraglutide for obesity, and -3.1% with liraglutide for Type 2 diabetes.
Women were the big winners here. They were more likely than men to pull off an impressive 10% weight loss. But the study noted that more weight loss was also tied to higher doses and persistent medication coverage.
Recently, Wegovy and Ozempic (the injectable semaglutides) have become more popular because they have been shown to help with significant weight loss. That, of course, produced a demand for the drug, causing shortages.
“Patients have high expectations to achieve substantial weight reductions with [these] medications,” the researchers said. “Our clinical findings suggest that this was not the case for most patients in our cohort; however, those who persisted with the medication coverage experienced weight losses comparable with those shown in corresponding clinical trials.”
