(Bloomberg) — A large study conducted during the pandemic showed that Novo Nordisk A/S’s Wegovy significantly reduced deaths and illness from COVID-19, adding to the evidence of the drug’s benefits beyond weight loss.
The findings, published Friday in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, offer a detailed analysis of Novo’s largest Wegovy trial, known as Select. When the pandemic began, the study had already enrolled over 17,600 people with obesity—a known risk factor for severe COVID-19—and heart disease.
While insurers and lawmakers criticize the high cost of weight-loss treatments, Novo and Eli Lilly & Co., the maker of the competing drug Zepbound, are striving to demonstrate that their expensive drugs provide broad benefits that justify coverage by insurers and government health plans. Last year, results from the Select study revealed that patients on Wegovy were 20% less likely to experience a heart attack or stroke compared to those on a placebo, paving the way for broader insurance coverage. However, the exact mechanism by which the drug might have aided COVID-19 patients remains unclear.
The study “highlights the relationship between obesity and COVID-19 disease severity,” said Barry Popkin, a nutrition professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Gillings School of Global Public Health, who was not involved in the research. “It’s uncertain whether this is related to the reduced lung capacity in individuals with obesity or other factors such as decreased inflammation.”
When COVID-19 first emerged, no one anticipated that Wegovy, which contains the active ingredient semaglutide, would lower deaths from the virus, said Donna Ryan, a professor emeritus at Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, who contributed to the study. The latest findings emphasize the drug’s wide-ranging effects on metabolism and inflammation, which are key factors in the body’s response to infections and other diseases.
“It’s not just about weight loss or diabetes,” said Ryan, who served on Novo’s steering committee for the Select trial and has consulted for other pharmaceutical companies. The drug’s impact is “much broader.”
Lilly is now investigating the anti-inflammatory properties of Zepbound, with plans to study its effects on conditions like psoriasis. The market for drugs that manage inflammation, estimated at about $100 billion this year, is among the largest in the world.
Obesity and COVID-19 The connection between body weight and COVID-19 became apparent early in the pandemic. People with obesity who contracted COVID-19 were more than twice as likely to be hospitalized, 74% more likely to require intensive care, and 48% more likely to die compared to those without obesity, according to a 2020 study led by Popkin.
During the first eight months of the pandemic, around 30% of COVID-19 hospitalizations occurred in patients who also had obesity, according to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In the Select study, approximately 2.6% of participants who took Wegovy experienced severe COVID-19-related events or died, compared to 3.1% of those on a placebo. The data did not indicate that Wegovy prevents COVID-19 infections. About a quarter of the trial participants reported contracting COVID-19, with similar infection rates among those taking Wegovy and those on placebo.
Researchers noted that the reduction in COVID-19 deaths among Wegovy users also contributed to a lower overall death rate in this group compared to patients on placebo. Novo scientists continue to analyze the data for further insights into the drug’s effects.
The findings “highlight the transformative potential of addressing obesity” in protecting against a wide range of health risks, said Harlan Krumholz, a professor at the Yale School of Medicine, in a statement.
