Study Claims Weight-Loss Drug Wegovy Cuts Risk of Heart Attack and Stroke by 20% Transcript

A new study by the maker of the popular weight loss drug Wegovy found it could lower the risk of serious and even deadly heart problems. The drug maker, Novo Nordisk, says its trial involved more than 17,000 overweight and obese adults 45 and older with cardiovascular disease, but no history of diabetes. It showed that Wegovy can reduce the risk of heart attack, stroke, or heart-related death by 20%.

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CBS News’ medical contributor, that’s Dr. Céline Gounder, who’s Editor-at-Large for Public Health at KFF, and joins us this morning.

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Céline, always good to have you here at the table. If I was overweight and obese, I’d be thinking, let me call my doctor today. Were these results a surprise?

These results were in fact better than expected. A 20% reduction in heart attacks and stroke from a weight loss medication, we’ve never seen that before with any approved weight loss medication that reduces obesity, and now we’re also seeing reduce some of these long-term health risks.

What are the side effects? Is there a downside here? Because on the face of it, I don’t hear a downside.

Well, I think this really shows that obesity is a disease. This is not just about a lack of willpower, not exercising enough. And if you really do want to reduce risk of heart attack and stroke, we need to be addressing obesity. But yes, there are some risks with these medications that we need to be aware of as well. It’s very common to have nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, constipation. You can have loss of muscle mass. There are more significant side effects, maybe a signal that there’s suicidal thoughts or suicidal attempts. So there are very real risks with these medications.

So this disease of obesity, as you point out, has been on the rise for many decades. Lots of efforts to intervene by the medical community have not worked out all that well. Could this study and this drug change the way people get help?

Well, I think it’s important to emphasize, this is a press release that was put out there. This is not a full study. This has not been peer reviewed where experts could say, “Okay, was this designed appropriately? Are there biases?”

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But yes, I think this could change the way we think about managing obesity in the longterm. Remember, these drugs are very expensive, almost $1,400 a month per patient. And so that is going to mean, even if insurance covers, your premiums might go up, your copays might go up. Medicare is paid for by taxes, and that means taxes could also go up.

And Medicare doesn’t currently cover it.

Right.

So you’re saying more studies need to be done?

More studies, and we need to think very carefully about how we’re going to cover these things, and other solutions that might be less expensive.

But you’re making an important point too about obesity, to think of it as a disease. For so long we’ve been told, “You just got to have willpower. You just move more, eat less.” But it’s so much bigger than that. I think that’s a really key issue here. A disease.

Yeah, that is a key point.

I would say that’s the biggest takeaway from this study, obesity is a disease.

But I think at this point though, as you said, this is a press release. A lot more to come and to learn about.

Right.

A lot more to come.

The details TK. All right, Dr. Céline Gounder, thank you very much.