Novo Nordisk's recent weight-loss drug gained a change after being successful

June 27, 2023: Novo Nordisk’s high-amount testing obesity medicine allowed overweight or obese adults to lose around 15% of their body weight, according to the recent late-stage clinical test outcomes.

The Danish company introduced the data at a diabetes conference Sunday. Novo Nordisk stated it plans to file for Food and Drug Administration drug approval later this year.

Novo Nordisk is battling to maintain its dominant position in the booming weight loss drug market as new competitors such as Eli Lilly and Pfizer develop effective treatments.

Novo Nordisk’s pill is a verbal version of semaglutide, the active ingredient in the group’s blockbuster weight loss injections Ozempic and Wegovy. Semaglutide mimics a hormone produced in the gut called GLP-1, which signals to the brain when a person is whole.

Novo Nordisk already has an FDA-approved oral semaglutide, marketed under Rybelsus for treating type 2 diabetes. But the tallest dose of Rybelsus is 14 milligrams, while the company’s experimental obesity drug has a far more substantial amount of 50 milligrams.

The phase three trial followed 667 obese and overweight adults who did not have Type 2 diabetes.

According to Novo Nordisk, patients who took 50 milligrams of the pill once a day for 68 weeks saw an average weight loss of 15.1% when they used it alongside diet and physical activity. That’s compared with a 2.4% weight loss for patients who took a placebo.

Around 85% of patients who took the pill lost at least 5% of their body weight, while just 26% of those who received the placebo did.

The weight loss also led to “improvements in physical functioning, allowing participants to have an improved quality of life for everyday activities,” Dr. Filip Knop, an endocrinology professor at the University of Copenhagen who worked on the study, said in a statement.

The latest data suggests that the high-dose pill may be as effective as Novo Nordisk’s weekly Wegovy injection, resulting in roughly 15% weight loss after 68 weeks.