FDA approves "Game Changer" Semaglutide for Weight Loss

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FDA Approves 'Game Changer' Semaglutide for Weight Loss - June 7, 2021

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved a 2.4 mg/week subcutaneous dose of the glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonist semaglutide (Wegovy, Novo Nordisk) for weight loss, the company has announced.


Specifically, this drug format and dosage are approved as an adjunct to a reduced-calorie diet and increased physical activity to treat adults who have obesity (body mass index [BMI] ≥ 30 kg/m2) or are overweight (BMI ≥ 27 kg/m2) with at least one weight-related comorbidity.


Semaglutide "induces weight loss by reducing hunger, increasing feelings of fullness, and thereby helping people eat less and reduce their calorie intake," according to a company statement.

Novo Nordisk plans to launch Wegovy later this month in the United States. The prescribing information can be found here.


The weight loss drug is currently under review by the European Medicines Agency.

Several experts told Medscape Medical News that they believe the approval of this drug — as long as it is reimbursed — has the potential to change the paradigm of care when it comes to weight loss.

"Game Changer" Drug Tested in STEP Clinical Trial Program


The favorable FDA ruling is based on results from the Semaglutide Treatment Effect in People With Obesity (STEP) program of four phase 3 clinical trials that tested the drug's safety and efficacy in more than 4500 adults with overweight or obesity who were randomized to receive a reduced calorie meal plan and increased physical activity (placebo) or the lifestyle intervention plus semaglutide.


The four 68-week trials of subcutaneous semaglutide 2.4 mg/week versus placebo were published in the New England Journal of Medicine (STEP 1), The Lancet (STEP 2), and JAMA (STEP 3STEP 4) in February and March 2021.

As previously reported by Medscape Medical News, all trials were in adults with overweight or obesity:

  • STEP 1 was in 1961 adults.
  • STEP 2 was in 1210 adults who also had diabetes.
  • STEP 3 was in 611 adults, where those in the treatment group also underwent an intensive lifestyle intervention.
  • STEP 4 was in 803 adults who had reached a target dose of 2.4 mg semaglutide after a 20-week run-in (and the trial examined further weight-loss in the subsequent 48 weeks).


In the STEP 1, 2, and 4 trials of individuals with overweight and obesity, those in the semaglutide groups attained a 15% to 18% weight loss over 68 weeks.


The dosage was well-tolerated. The most common side effects were gastrointestinal, and they were transient and mild or moderate in severity.   


The side effects, contraindications, and a black box warning about thyroid C-cell tumors are spelled out in the prescribing information.


A coauthor of the STEP 1 trial, Rachel Batterham, MBBS, PhD, of the Centre for Obesity Research at University College London, UK, said at the time of publication: "The findings of this study represent a major breakthrough for improving the health of people with obesity."


"No other drug has come close to producing this level of weight loss — this really is a game changer. For the first time, people can achieve through drugs what was only possible through weight-loss surgery," she added. 


Welcome Addition, But Will Insurance Coverage, Price Thwart Access?

Invited to comment on the FDA approval, Thomas A. Wadden, PhD, from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, and lead author of STEP 3, told Medscape Medical News in an email that "semaglutide 2.4 mg appears to be the breakthrough in weight management that healthcare providers and their patients with obesity have been waiting for."


The mean 15% weight loss at 68 weeks is nearly twice what is seen with other FDA-approved anti-obesity medications, he noted, and moreover, 70% of patients taking semaglutide lost at least 10% of their initial weight, which is associated with clinically meaningful improvements in obesity-related type 2 diabetes, hypertension, obstructive sleep apnea, and impaired quality of life.


And "nearly one third of users are likely to lose 20% or more of their starting weight, an outcome which eludes traditional diet and exercise interventions and which approaches weight losses produced by the most widely performed bariatric surgery, sleeve gastrectomy (with mean losses of 25% of initial weight at 1 year)," Wadden stressed.


Thus, "the efficacy of semaglutide 2.4 mg, combined with its favorable safety profile, makes this medication a potential game changer," he summarized, echoing Batterham.


However, insurance coverage and price could block uptake.


"I hope that the millions of people — in the US and worldwide — who could benefit from this medication eventually will have access to it," said Wadden. "In the US, the coverage of anti-obesity medications by insurers and employers will need to improve to ensure this happens, and the medication must be reasonably priced. These changes are critical to making this medication the game changer it could be."

"This approval is an important development," Scott Kahan, MD, director of the National Center for Weight and Wellness, Washington, DC, who was not involved in clinical trials of the drug, similarly told Medscape Medical News in an email.


"In a field with relatively few medication options, the availability of additional obesity pharmacotherapy agents is welcome," he said. "In particular, semaglutide has shown impressive efficacy and safety data; as such it should be a valuable clinical option for many patients."


However, it is concerning that "access to obesity treatments has traditionally been a challenge," Kahan warned. "Novo Nordisk's other obesity medication, Saxenda, has been a valuable tool, but one that exceedingly few patients are able to utilize due to minimal insurance reimbursement and very high cost.""It remains to be seen how accessible semaglutide will be for patients," according to Kahan. "Still, if the challenge of limited coverage and high cost can be mitigated, this medication has a chance to significantly change the current paradigm of care, which until now has included minimal use of pharmacotherapy outside specialty clinics," he maintained.


Lower-Dose Injectable and Pill Already Approved for Diabetes

Subcutaneous semaglutide at doses up to 1 mg/week (Ozempic, Novo Nordisk), which comes as prefilled pens at doses of 0.5 mg or 1.0 mg, is already approved for the treatment of type 2 diabetes.


The company is also applying for approval for a higher dose of semaglutide, 2 mg/week, for use in type 2 diabetes, and has just resubmitted its label expansion application to the FDA, after the agency issued a refusal to file letter in March.

And in September 2019, the FDA approved oral semaglutide (Rybelsus, Novo Nordisk), in doses of 7 and 14 mg/day, to improve glycemic control in type 2 diabetes, making it the first GLP-1 receptor agonist available in tablet form.


CVOT and Oral Format Trials for Obesity on the Horizon

The ongoing Semaglutide Effects on Heart Disease and Stroke in Patients With Overweight or Obesity (SELECT) trial will shed light on cardiovascular outcomes after 2.5 to 5 years in patients with cardiovascular disease and overweight or obesity but without type 2 diabetes. Participants will receive semaglutide in doses up to a maximum of 2.4 mg/week, or placebo, as an adjunct to lifestyle recommendations focused on cardiovascular risk reduction. The study is expected to complete in 2023.


And Novo Nordisk plans to initiate a global 68-week phase 3 trial in the second half of 2021 on the efficacy and safety of oral semaglutide 50 mg compared with placebo in 1000 people with obesity or overweight and comorbidities.


Semaglutide will be available later this month for our clients at Dr. Mantor's Wrinkle and Weight Solutions, LLC. If you would like additional information regarding our Physician and Registered Dietician, weight management programs, please give us a call at 614-891-2000 or schedule 24/7 online @


https://WrinkleandWeight.com



Dr. Gina K. Mantor has been practicing at her medical spa in Westerville, Ohio for 13 years and is Board Certified in Internal Medicine, as well as, Board Certified by the American Board of Obesity Medicine (ABOM) as an ABOM diplomate. She was recently named the Director of Cardiopulmonary Services with Central Ohio Primary Care Physicians (COPC). She has helped hundreds of her clients, throughout Central Ohio and beyond, maintain a healthy weight and lifestyle since opening her medical spa in 2008.



Dr. Mantor's Wrinkle and Weight Solutions, LLC

6982 Worthington Road

Westerville, OH 43082


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In the News Recent case reports have raised the possibility that semaglutide—a glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) receptor agonist— could be tied to a higher risk of suicidal ideation . But a retrospective study that included about 241 000 patients with overweight or obesity as well as about 1.6 million patients with type 2 diabetes did not confirm that link. Instead, researchers found the opposite. People taking semaglutide had a lower risk of both first-time and recurrent suicidal ideation compared with those taking non–GLP-1 receptor agonists to manage obesity, such as phentermine, as well as those used to manage type 2 diabetes, such as metformin. Because it was retrospective, the current study could not establish a causal link between semaglutide and the lower risk of suicidal ideation, the researchers—including Nora Volkow, MD, the director of the US National Institute on Drug Abuse at the National Institutes of Health—wrote in Nature Medicine. They also noted the need for additional controlled trials to better understand the relationship. 
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The recently licensed weight-loss drug semaglutide 2.4 mg/week (Wegovy, Novo Nordisk) "is likely to usher in a new era in the medical treatment of obesity ," stated Lee M. Kaplan, MD, PhD, at the virtual American Diabetes Association (ADA) 81st Scientific Sessions. Kaplan discussed the clinical implications of caring for patients with obesity now that the glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonist is approved in the United States for weight loss. Weight loss with semaglutide 2.4 mg was twice that achieved with liraglutide 3 mg (Saxenda, Novo Nordisk) — that is, roughly a 10% to 15% weight loss at 68 weeks, said Kaplan, who was not involved in the pivotal STEP clinical trials of the agent. "I think as we start to see more data come in over the next couple of years," including from the cardiovascular outcome trial SELECT, he continued, "we'll be able to use the data to create a nuanced [individualized patient treatment] approach, but we'll also be able to use our clinical experience, which will grow rapidly over the next few years." In future, semaglutide is likely to be combined with other drugs to provide even greater weight loss, predicts Kaplan, director of the Obesity, Metabolism, and Nutrition Institute at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. In the meantime, "to be effective, semaglutide needs to be used," he stressed, while noting that responses to the drug vary by individual, and so this will need to be taken into account. "Obesity needs to be recognized as a disease in its own right, as well as a risk factor for numerous other diseases, [and] equitable access to obesity treatment needs to be broadened," he emphasized. Four Pivotal Phase 3 trials As previously reported, four pivotal 68-week, phase 3 clinical trials in the Semaglutide Treatment Effect in People With Obesity (STEP) program tested the safety and efficacy of subcutaneous semaglutide 2.4 mg/week in more than 4500 adults with overweight or obesity. The trials have been published in high profile journals — the New England Journal of Medicine ( STEP 1 ), The Lancet ( STEP 2 ), and JAMA ( STEP 3 , STEP 4 ) — said Robert F. Kushner, MD. "I would encourage all of you to download and read each of these trials on your own," said Kushner, professor of medicine and medicine education at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, in Chicago, Illinois, and coauthor of STEP 1, before presenting a top-level review of key results. STEP 1 examined weight management, STEP 3 added a background of intensive behavioral therapy, STEP 4 investigated sustained weight management, and STEP 2 (unlike the others) investigated weight management in patients with type 2 diabetes , he summarized. In STEP 1, patients who received semaglutide had an average 15% weight loss, and those who stayed on the drug had a 17% weight loss, compared with the 2.4% weight loss in the placebo group. "One third of individuals in the trial achieved at least a 20% weight loss or more," Kushner said, which is "really phenomenal." The results of STEP 3 "suggest that semaglutide with monthly brief lifestyle counseling alone is sufficient to produce a mean weight loss of 15%," he noted, as adding a low-calorie diet and intensive behavior therapy sped up the initial weight loss but did not increase the final weight loss. A post-hoc analysis of STEP 2 showed "it's clear that improvement in A1c " is greater with at least a 10% weight loss versus a smaller weight loss, Kushner said. A1c dropped by 2.2% versus 1.3%, with these two weight losses respectively. In STEP 4, after dose escalation to 2.4 mg at 20 weeks, patients had lost 10.6% of their initial weight. At 68 weeks, those who were switched to placebo at 20 weeks had lost 5.4% of their initial weight, whereas those who remained on semaglutide had lost 17.7% of their initial weight. This shows that "if you remove the drug, the disease starts to come back," Kushner pointed out. Nausea, the most common side effect, occurred in 20% of patients, but was mostly mild or moderate, and gastrointestinal effects including constipation , vomiting, and diarrhea were transient and occurred early in the dose escalation phase. Large Individual Variability, Combination Therapies on Horizon Kaplan pointed out, however, that "like [with] other anti-obesity therapies...there's a large patient-to-patient variability." A third of patients exhibit more than 20% weight loss, and 10% exhibit more than 30% weight loss — approaching the efficacy of b ariatric surgery . However, nearly 10% of patients without diabetes and upwards of 30% of patients with diabetes will experience less than 5% weight loss, he said. Therefore, "success or failure in one patient doesn't predict response in another, and we should always remember that as we treat different patients with these medications," Kaplan advised clinicians. A recent phase 1b study suggests that combination therapy with semaglutide and the amylin agonist cagrilintide ups weight loss, as previously reported . In this short trial with no lifestyle modification, it took 16 weeks for patients to reach full dosing, and at 20 weeks, patients on semaglutide had lost 8% of their initial weight, whereas those on combination therapy had lost 17% of their initial weight. "There's hope that, in combination with cagrilintide and probably with several other agents that are still in early development, we'll be seeing average weight loss that is in the range of that seen with bariatric surgery," Kushner said. Case 1 ou have a patient with type 2 diabetes, a body mass index (BMI) of 32, 33 kg/m 2 , and an A1c of 7.5% or 8% on metformin . Would you use semaglutide 1 mg (Ozempic, Novo Nordisk) that is indicated for type 2 diabetes, or would you use semaglutide 2.4 mg that is indicated for obesity and risk factors? "We have the answer to that from STEP 2," said Melanie J. Davies, MB ChB, MD, professor of diabetes medicine at the University of Leicester, UK, who led the STEP 2 trial. "For some patients, the 1-mg dose, which we use routinely in the clinic, may be reasonable to get good glycemic control for cardiovascular protection and will obviously achieve some weight loss. But if you really want to go for the weight-related comorbidities, then the 2.4-mg dose is what you need," she said. Dr Melanie J. Davies "A lot of [clinicians] might say: 'I'll see how [the patient goes] with the 1-mg dose, and then maybe if they're not losing the weight and not getting to glycemic target, then maybe I'll switch to 2.4 mg,'" said John Wilding, MD, who leads clinical research into obesity, diabetes, and endocrinology at the University of Liverpool, in the UK, and led the STEP 1 trial. "But the STEP 2 data show very clearly that you get almost the same A1c," Rosenstock interjected. "I would go for 2.4 mg. The patient has a BMI of 32, 33 kg/m 2 . I would hit hard the BMI. We need to change that paradigm." "For other diseases we don't always go to the maximum dose that's available. We go to the dose that's necessary to achieve the clinical endpoint that we want," Kaplan noted. "I think one of the challenges is going to be to learn how to clinically nuance our therapy the way we do for other diseases." "That is the usual thinking," Rosenstock agreed. But "with the 2.4-mg dose, one third get a 20% reduction of BMI, and 10% get almost a 30% reduction — and you [aren't] going to see that with semaglutide 1 mg!" "That's true," Kaplan conceded. However, a patient with a relatively low BMI of 32, 33 kg/m 2 may not need the higher dose, unlike a patient who has a BMI of 45 kg/m 2 and diabetes. But we're going to find that out over the next couple of years, he expects. Case 2 Dr John Wilding You have a patient with a BMI of 31 kg/m 2 who is newly diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. Why should you start them with metformin? Why won't you start them with something that will directly tackle obesity and get the patient to lose 20 pounds and for sure the blood sugar is going to be better? "I think if I have someone who is really keen to put their diabetes into remission," Wilding said, "this would be a fantastic approach because they would have a really high chance of doing that." The prediabetes data from STEP showed that "we can put a lot of people from prediabetes back to normal glucose tolerance," Wilding noted. "Maybe we can put people with early diabetes back to normal as well. I think that's a trial that really does need to be done," he said. "I think you have to remember that of the millions and millions of people with obesity, a very small portion are currently treated with anti-obesity medication, and an even smaller portion are getting bariatric surgery," Kaplan replied. "In the United States, 90% of people who get bariatric surgery are self-referred," he said, so, "I think initially we are not going to see much of a change" in rates of bariatric surgery. 12 3 4 Next
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