Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Obesity Drug Shows Heart Benefit
Taking Novo Nordisk鈥檚 (NOVOb.CO) new obesity drug may help reduce the risk of heart disease as well as boosting weight loss, according to new research from the United States. After a year of taking semaglutide, marketed as Wegovy, patients鈥 risk of suffering from conditions like a heart attack or a stroke over the next ten years dropped to 6.3% from 7.6% when measured by a commonly used calculator, researchers at the Mayo Clinic found. (Rigby, 5/19)
All her life, Victoria Rutledge thought of herself as someone with an addictive personality. Her first addiction was alcohol. After she got sober in her early 30s, she replaced drinking with food and shopping, which she thought about constantly. She would spend $500 on organic groceries, only to have them go bad in her fridge. 鈥淚 couldn鈥檛 stop from going to that extreme,鈥 she told me. When she ran errands at Target, she would impulsively throw extra things鈥攃andles, makeup, skin-care products鈥攊nto her cart. (Zhang, 5/19)
Weight loss drugs have soared in popularity in the past year, helping some lose dramatic amounts of weight 鈥 but not all that weight is fat.聽Some of that is actually lean mass, which is everything in the body that isn鈥檛 fat, including your bones, organs and, importantly, muscle.聽(Sullivan, 5/20)
Novo Nordisk is pausing ads for its obesity drug Wegovy as it struggles to keep up with surging demand, the latest hurdle in its rollout of the weight loss drug. 鈥淭o avoid stimulating further demand for this medicine, we鈥檙e pausing some key Wegovy promotional efforts,鈥 the Danish drugmaker said in an emailed statement. (Chen, 5/19)