Novo Nordisk said some early responders on high-dose Wegovy lost 27.7% of their weight on average after 72 weeks in a late-stage trial.
Novo Nordisk said Tuesday that some patients taking a higher-dose version of Wegovy lost an average of 27.7% of their body weight after 72 weeks, a finding that could strengthen the company’s case for the newer dose of its obesity drug.
The result came from a new analysis of a late-stage trial presented at the European Congress on Obesity. Novo said the patients who reached that level of weight loss were “early responders,” meaning they lost at least 15% of their weight during the first 24 weeks of treatment.
The data arrives about a month after Novo launched the 7.2-milligram Wegovy shot in the U.S. The higher dose is part of the company’s effort to better compete with Eli Lilly’s Zepbound, which has gained ground in the obesity-drug market after showing average weight loss of more than 20% in late-stage studies.
Across the full study population, patients who received the 7.2-milligram dose lost almost 21% of their weight on average. Before the new dose launched, the highest available injectable Wegovy dose was 2.4 milligrams; in the trial, that dose helped patients lose more than 17% of their weight on average after 72 weeks.
Novo has argued that high-dose Wegovy’s average weight-loss results above 20% could help it compete more closely with Zepbound. The company also said on an earnings call last week that users are already ramping up to the 7.2-milligram dose and that three of the largest U.S. pharmacy benefit managers have added it to standard formularies as an extension of Wegovy.
Still, the new analysis has limits. The 27.7% figure applied only to early responders, and the company said roughly one in four people on the highest dose had that early response in the trial, compared with about one in five people taking the 2.4-milligram dose. The data do not show that every patient starting high-dose Wegovy should expect to lose nearly 28% of their weight.
Patients in the trial who did not have an early treatment response lost 15.4% of their weight on average, according to Novo. In the company’s release, Dr. Dror Dicker, an associate clinical professor of internal medicine at Tel-Aviv University’s Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, said those patients still experienced “a substantial and clinically meaningful weight loss.”
It also remains difficult to compare the early-responder results directly with Zepbound because the average weight loss for comparable early responders on Lilly’s drug is unclear from the data cited. Analysts have previously told CNBC that it is uncertain whether the higher-dose Wegovy will materially shift market share, given Zepbound’s position in the injectable obesity-drug market.
The next test for Novo will be whether the higher dose gains traction with prescribers, patients and payers as its U.S. rollout continues.
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