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DUBLIN — Taking Novo Nordisk’s new anti-obesity drug may not only boost weight loss, but may also reduce the risk of heart disease, a new US study has found.
After one year of taking semaglutide, marketed as Wegovy, a patient’s risk of suffering a heart attack or stroke over the next 10 years drops from 7.6% to 6.3%, as measured by commonly used calculators. said Mayo Clinic researchers. found.
The results, presented at the European Obesity Conference in Dublin this week, are one of the first indications that weight loss induced by new GLP-1 agonist drugs like Wegobee also provides heart health benefits. is one. Scientists expected it, but it didn’t. There is still a lot of comprehensive data to prove.
The study included only 93 patients, and the researchers needed more numbers to confirm whether the risk reduction scores actually meant less illness and death over time. A large-scale study is needed, he said.
Novo plans to publish 5-year results SELECT trial Later this year, it plans to investigate the health effects of injectable drugs, particularly for heart disease. Investors, governments and insurers alike are keenly watching the data.
“This is very important because we know that obesity is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease,” one of the researchers, Dr. Andrés Acosta, told Reuters.
“So the question is, can you say that with 15% (average weight loss) of the drug, you’re really starting to improve cardiovascular risk and people are dying less,” he said.
Risk was calculated using the American College of Cardiology calculators based on data such as blood pressure and cholesterol levels. The research team assessed risk in patients (predominantly white women, with an average BMI of 39.8 and no history of heart disease) before they started taking the drug and after one year of taking it.
The study was peer-reviewed by conference organizers, the European Obesity Society, but the full paper is not yet available. This study was not funded by Novo.
