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The largest and longest study of the obesity drug Wegovy has shown people maintain significant weight loss for at least four years, with fewer serious adverse events than those given placebo ‘dummy’ treatment.
Doctors say the finding will add pressure on UK health authorities, which currently limit treatment to just two years.
Results revealed at an international obesity conference show those given weekly injections of the drug shed pounds for the first 65 weeks of treatment, and then sustained a stable body weight over the longer term.
On average they lost 10.2% of their body weight and 7.7cm from their waist size after four years.
Significantly, even those who were only slightly obese, or who only lost a small amount of weight, still benefited from a reduction in cardiovascular risks, according to results presented at the European Congress on Obesity in Venice and published in the journal Nature Medicine.
Dr Simon Cork, senior lecturer in physiology at Anglia Ruskin University, who wasn’t involved in the study, said the results show for the first time that patients maintain a “weight plateau” if they continue treatment long term.
“Importantly one of the decisions by the UK health service to limit (treatment) to two years was because of questionable long-term cost effectiveness,” he said.
He added: “That this data demonstrates improved cardiovascular and metabolic parameters continuing to four years may go some way to negating that argument.
“This study also neatly demonstrates that obesity is a lifelong condition and the decision by NICE to limit prescription to two years does a disservice to patients suffering with obesity.”
The SELECT (Semaglutide and Cardiovascular Outcomes) trial involved 17,604 adults with obesity or who were overweight from 41 countries. None of them had diabetes, but all had previously…
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