Obesity Drug Brings Heart Health Benefit Alongside Weight Loss: Study

DUBLIN (Reuters) – Taking Novo Nordisk’s 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’ 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.

The results, which were presented this week at the European Congress on Obesity in Dublin, are among the first indication that the weight loss induced by the new GLP-1 agonist drugs like Wegovy also brings heart health benefits – something scientists expected, but do not yet have much comprehensive data to prove.

The study was only done among 93 patients, and the researchers said that more and larger studies were needed to see if the risk reduction score actually meant less illness and death long-term.

To read the rest of the article head over to Medscape.com