One injection per week

In the USA, injections for obesity have been approved for use

Sergey Vasiliev, Naked Science

American Food and Drug Administration (FDA) allowed the medical use of the drug Wegovy for the treatment of obese people. The drug can be prescribed to patients whose overweight has led to the occurrence of relevant diseases, such as type 2 diabetes, simultaneously with a low-calorie diet and exercise. The drug should be taken by weekly injections.

The active component of Wegovy is semaglutide, developed by Novo Nordisk to help diabetic patients. It is a synthetic analogue of the human glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1), a hormone that is normally produced in response to food intake and regulates many processes associated with its digestion. In diabetics, it stimulates the production of insulin, allowing you to keep blood glucose levels under control.

The practice of using semaglutide has shown that people taking it regularly also lose weight, after which it was studied in a new capacity. Tests have confirmed that relatively large doses of the drug can combat obesity.

The results were published in The New England Journal of Medicine (Wilding et al., Once-Weekly Semaglutide in Adults with Overweight or Obesity). After the necessary checks, the FDA approved it for use to solve the problem of overweight. According to WHO, 13% of the world's adult population is obese, and every fourth person weighs more than normal.

68 volunteers who did not suffer from diabetes took part in the trials. They were given Wegovy injections. As a result, the subjects lost an average of 12.4 percent more excess weight than people who received a placebo. 

At the same time, the safety of the drug is reliably confirmed. Among the side effects are nausea, dizziness, abdominal pain, dyspepsia and others, so it is recommended to take it exclusively under the supervision of a doctor.

According to many experts, semaglutide can be called a revolutionary tool. It became the first of the analogues of GPP-1, and then new such substances are already being tested. Pharmaceutical companies finance the development of analogues of other incretins – hormones of the endocrine system involved in the regulation of digestion, eating behavior, insulin secretion, and so on. Some have so far demonstrated even greater effectiveness than semaglutide. Perhaps soon the field of overweight treatment is really waiting for a pharmacological revolution.

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