With competition in the GLP-1 category increasingly cutthroat, Novo Nordisk has latched onto a real-world study that found its weight-loss drug Wegovy was better than Eli Lilly’s rival Zepbound at protecting patients from cardiovascular complications.
The STEER study showed that people living with obesity and cardiovascular disease taking GLP-1 agonist Wegovy (semaglutide) were 57% less likely to have a heart attack, stroke or death from any cause than a group treated with Zepbound (tirzepatide), a dual GIP/GLP-1 agonist.
That result was seen in people who stuck with the GLP-1-based treatment, with no gaps in treatment of 30 days or more. The results also showed that for those with treatment gaps of any duration, there was still a 29% improvement with Novo Nordisk’s drug.
Overall, the result – presented at the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) congress – suggests that “the heart-protective benefits seen with Wegovy are specific to the semaglutide molecule and therefore cannot be extended to other GLP-1 or GIP/GLP-1-based treatments.”
The STEER investigators harvested health insurance claims data from people enrolled in Komodo Research’s real-world data platform who started semaglutide or tirzepatide treatment on or after 13th May, 2022, with more than 10,000 people in each group.
There were relatively few cardiovascular events in each group, however, and the investigators behind the work acknowledged that this was a limitation of the analysis, along with the potential for “coding inaccuracies” in the claims data and limited follow-up duration.
Nevertheless, the company said that the STEER results back up the data in its earlier SELECT trial, which led to Wegovy’s first-in-class approval by the FDA to reduce the risk of serious cardiovascular conditions in people who are overweight or obese.
“This data confirms that semaglutide stands apart as the only available GLP-1-based medication with proven cardiovascular benefits for people living with obesity and cardiovascular disease, without diabetes,” said Ludovic Helfgott, head of product and portfolio strategy at Novo Nordisk.
The result comes after semaglutide lost out to tirzepatide in head-to-head trials in diabetes and obesity, and as Lilly’s drug seems to be gaining ground in the market.
Novo Nordisk cut its full-year sales forecast for 2025 on weakness for its GLP-1 business, which claimed the job of former chief executive Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen, but has since racked up a potentially critical, first-in-class FDA approval for Wegovy in metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH).
Photo by Robina Weermeijer on Unsplash
