This appeared last week:
Ozempic reduces risk of heart failure by 27pc: study
Euan Black Work and careers reporter
Sep 1, 2024 – 3.49pm
Semaglutide, the active ingredient in diabetes drug Ozempic, could reduce the risk of heart failure events by 27 per cent and the risk of cardiovascular death by 29 per cent in people with diabetes and chronic kidney disease, a study has found.
Scientists don’t yet know why. But the findings, taken from a new study of a previous clinical trial called the FLOW trial, are important because heart disease is the leading cause of death in Australia and elsewhere.
They also add to mounting evidence that the drug best known for helping people lose weight could be used to treat conditions besides diabetes.
Published in the Journal of The American College of Cardiology, the study was based on a randomised controlled trial involving more than 3500 people with type 2 diabetes and chronic kidney disease.
The participants were randomly designated into one of two groups and followed for a median of 3.4 years.
The first group was injected with 1mg of semaglutide once a week, while the second group was given a placebo.
The dose for the first group was increased from 0.25mg for the first four weeks to 0.5mg for the next four weeks, before a maintenance dose of 1mg was given for the remainder of the treatment period.
‘Highly promising’
The group treated with semaglutide had a 27 per cent lower relative risk of heart failure events and a 29 per cent lower relative risk of heart-related death.
“We wanted to have a look at whether semaglutide had any impact on the risk of heart failure, and we actually found a very strong effect,” said study researcher Vlado Perkovic, principal investigator for the FLOW trial and provost of University of NSW.
“A 27 per cent reduction in the risk of heart failure is highly promising.”
Professor Perkovic said similar benefits were also found in those who started the trial with heart failure.
For example, people with HF who were treated with semaglutide had a 30 per cent lower risk of cardiovascular death than those in the placebo group who started the trial with HF.
But Professor Perkovic said scientists did not yet know why the drug reduced these risks.
Unclear mechanisms
“It’s unlikely to be related to the glucose-lowering effects [of the drug],” he said.
“That seems the least likely [explanation], particularly because there’s emerging data suggesting it’s also effective in people without diabetes.”
Professor Perkovic told The Australian Financial Review the weight loss caused by the drug might explain the risk reductions, given obesity was a risk factor for heart failure. And the kidney-protective effect of the drug might also be important.
“But there may also be specific effects on the heart,” he said.
“There’s a lot of work being done to try and understand how the drug affects the heart more specifically, but at this stage, it’s not really clear.”
Gastrointestinal disorders were the most common adverse events among those who had to drop out of the trial, which was funded by Ozempic manufacturer Novo Nordisk.
Mounting evidence of benefits
A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine last year found that the drug may even lower the risk of heart attacks and strokes in people without diabetes.
The study involved 17,600 participants who did not have diabetes but were overweight and aged 45 and older. Half received weekly injections of Wegovy, a brand of semaglutide also made by Novo Nordisk, and half received an injected placebo.
Of the 8800 assigned to receive Wegovy, about 130 were spared a heart attack, stroke, or death.
“This number is within the range we would normally see from standard therapies, such as statins, beta blockers or aspirin, used after a cardiac event,” Jason Kovacic, director and CEO of the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute, told the Financial Review in May.
“But in this case, the Wegovy benefit was additional to those gains, as patients were also receiving standard therapies.
“The results are impressive and are only over about three years. If you translate them out over a longer period, we expect there would be even more substantial reductions in cardiac events and potentially more lives saved.”
Here is the link:
On the face of it, this has to be a very good thing! Sadly I understand the price for non-diabetics is around $140 per month, rather than about 1/5 of that on a concessional basis for pensioners with diabetes.
Not only this but I understand that there are very considerable shortages of the drug, not only here but globally!
I suspect it will be next year, or even longer, before things even out and supply can match demand…
David.
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