OPERATION WARP SPEED: Obesity Addition
Keep eating shit food, get fat, and then take shit medication
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Drug makers across the world are racing to bring weight-loss drugs to the market given the surging popularity of such medications as Ozempic and Wegovy.
Novo Nordisk was forced to announce last month that it had to limit the supply of Wegovy because demand has outpaced the company’s ability to manufacture the product.
Boehringer Ingelheim, the German pharmaceutical company, said it will introduce its own drug that has resulted in prescribers losing 19 percent of their body weight. To put it in perspective, Wegovy’s drug resulted in users losing 15 percent of their body weight.
The race for appetite-suppressant drugs has resulted in a major windfall for pharmaceuticals, The Financial Times reported. The paper said Novo Nordisk’s shares have jumped 247 percent in the last five years.
The report, citing data from the World Health Organization, reported that international obesity rates have tripled since 1975. About half of Americans are expected to be obese by 2030, the report said.
Boehringer Ingelheim said its Phase 2 trials showed up to 40 percent of those who had high doses of the medication experienced at least 20 percent weight loss when compared to placebo after 46 weeks, Fierce Biotech reported.
The company said the high doses appeared safe. A higher proportion of patients who took the placebo experienced a higher level of serious adverse events than those who took Survodutide, the new medication, (6.5 percent to 4.2 percent), the report said.
“Given the prevalence of obesity and its many disease-related complications, there is a dire need for treatments that can help treat the disease of obesity effectively,” Dr. Carel le Roux, professor at University College in Dublin and principal investigator of the trial, said in a statement.
“Current treatments for obesity mainly focus on weight loss by reducing energy intake.2 By activating both the glucagon and GLP-1 receptors, survodutide may both inhibit appetite and improve energy expenditure, thereby helping to treat the disease of obesity.2 These encouraging data support the further study of survodutide in larger Phase III trials.”
TRENDPOST: The FT saved the fact that about 25 percent of the participants in the latest round of trials backed out because of side effects. The report noted that many of these individuals suffered gastrointestinal issues like nausea, a common side effect for the other obesity drugs on the market.
The “obesity epidemic” is old news by now: 13 percent of the world’s adults are obese—defined as a body mass index of 30 or higher—including 36 percent of Americans, according to Harvard University.
We’ve noted that Americans generally look for quick meals and then, when they become obese, the quick fix, which is why there’s been such demand for the type-2 diabetes drug called Ozempic—and a favorite among celebrities.
Ozempic suppresses appetites and “causes the stomach to empty more slowly, leading people to feel full for longer,” The New York Times reported. Doctors warn that many of those who take the drug, put back on the weight a short time after they stopped.
