Novo Nordisk A/S’s Wegovy reduced deaths and illness from COVID in a large study that took place during the pandemic, more evidence of the blockbuster shot’s benefits beyond weight loss. The findings, published Friday in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, provide a deeper analysis of Novo’s largest Wegovy trial, called Select. When the pandemic hit, the research was already enrolling more than 17,600 people with obesity, now known to be a risk factor for severe COVID, and heart disease.
While insurers and lawmakers assail prices for weight-loss treatments, Novo and Eli Lilly & Co., the maker of rival drug Zepbound, are striving to show their costly drugs offer broad benefits that merit coverage from insurers and government health plans. Last year, results from the Select study showed that patients on Wegovy were 20% less likely to suffer a heart attack or stroke than those on placebo, later opening the door to broader insurance coverage.
How the drug might have helped COVID patients still isn’t completely clear. The research “highlights the relationship between obesity and COVID 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 wasn’t involved in the study. “We do not know if this relates to the reduced lung capacity of individuals with obesity or other pathways such as reduced inflammation.
” When COVID emerged, no one suspected that W.