Navigate the healthcare industry
Healthcare Brew covers pharmaceutical developments, health startups, the latest tech, and how it impacts hospitals and providers to keep administrators and providers informed.
In a recent study conducted by Eli Lilly, the drugmaker said its GLP-1 Zepbound was more effective than Novo Nordisk’s competitor, Wegovy, at promoting weight loss in patients with obesity.
The results follow a prior study conducted by Providence Health System in Oregon and published in July in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine that showed Lilly’s drug led to more weight loss than Novo Nordisk’s.
The outcome could give Eli Lilly a leg up in the increasingly competitive GLP-1 market, the Wall Street Journal reported. Lilly also announced on December 11 a partnership with direct-to-consumer telehealth company Ro to deliver Zepbound straight to patients’ homes.
Science journal Nature projected on December 10 that Zepbound would be the 10th most profitable drug in the US in 2025, bringing in $11.3 billion. Zepbound has made Lilly roughly $3 billion through the third quarter of 2024, according to earnings released on October 30.
By the numbers. Adults who took Zepbound lost 50.3 pounds on average, while those who took Wegovy lost 33.1 pounds on average, meaning Zepbound led to a 47% greater weight loss, Lilly reported.
Additionally, 31.6% of Zepbound patients lost at least a quarter of their body weight, compared to 16.1% of Wegovy patients, the company said.
The trial, which Eli Lilly funded and conducted, included participants with either overweight or obesity who had a comorbidity including hypertension, dyslipidemia, obstructive sleep apnea, or cardiovascular disease, but who did not have diabetes.
What’s the difference? The active ingredient in Zepbound is called tirzepatide, while the active ingredient in Wegovy is semaglutide. These drugs “mimic the way a hormone called glucagon-like peptide 1 works in the body,” according to the Mayo Clinic. That means GLP-1s help the body make more insulin, which lowers blood sugar.
But tirzepatide also mimics a second hormone called gastric inhibitory polypeptide, or GIP, which helps reduce appetite by slowing food’s movement from the stomach, according to Weill Cornell Medicine.
Both Zepbound and Wegovy have other benefits besides weight loss. The FDA approved Wegovy as a treatment to reduce patients’ risk of developing serious symptoms of cardiovascular disease, like heart attack or stroke, and there is some evidence that Zepbound can help patients with sleep apnea.
“We will continue to invest in a variety of disease states including diabetes, chronic kidney disease, obesity, [cardiovascular] disease, liver disease, and Alzheimer’s disease, as seen in our robust clinical development programs and outcome studies,” Liz Skrbkova, a spokesperson for Novo Nordisk, told Healthcare Brew.