Jacob Grönholt-Pedersen and Bhanvi Satija
COPENHAGEN (Reuters) – Novo Nordisk’s (NYSE:) popular obesity drug Wegovy helped women with advanced heart disease lose more weight than men with the same condition, an analysis of study data published in a medical journal showed.
The studies included 1,145 patients and focused on a condition known as heart failure with preserved ejection fraction, or HFpEF, in which the heart muscles tighten and suck in less blood.
Data from two studies in which the drug was tested in people with obesity-related heart failure as well as HFpEF – both with and without diabetes – were presented at the scientific meeting of the American Diabetes Association in Orlando, Florida, on Sunday.
Data showed that the drug produced similar improvements in HFpEF symptoms, physical limitations, and physical activity regardless of gender.
The pre-specified analysis was published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
“We see benefits for both men and women,” Stephen Gough, Novo’s chief medical officer, said in an interview. He added that the trial data supports Wegovy’s potential to achieve clinical improvements in patients with heart failure.
Novo’s trials were not designed to evaluate the effectiveness of Vegovi’s treatment, a chemical known as semaglutide, in relation to biological sex.
About half of the patients who took part in the studies were women. The analysis found that they had a higher body mass index and more severe heart failure symptoms. Women were also less likely to have abnormal heart rhythms or coronary heart disease compared to men.
Data showed that a 2.4 mg dose of semaglutide in patients with obesity-related HFpEF reduced body weight more in women. Females lost an average of 9.6% of their body weight, and males lost about 7.2% of their body weight.
The benefit for heart failure was found to be similar in men and women, with improvement in both groups averaging about 7.5 points on a scale of 0 to 100 points.
Other studies have also shown greater weight loss responses in women than men when taking semaglutide, for reasons that are not yet clear, according to the analysis.
The “key unexpected finding” of the analysis was that greater weight loss among women did not lead to equally significant improvements in heart failure symptoms, according to an editorial published along with the study.
More research is needed to identify the reasons for this discrepancy, the researchers said.
Data showed that patients receiving semaglutide experienced fewer serious adverse events than patients receiving placebo.
HFpEF accounts for about half of cases of heart failure, the symptoms of which include shortness of breath and swelling of the extremities. Previous studies have shown that the disease most often affects overweight people and is especially common among women.