Semaglutide was recently approved in the US by the Food and Drug Administration as an obesity treatment[1] and has been provisionally approved by The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence to treat obesity in England.
“Semaglutide appears to be the most effective medication to date for treating obesity and is beginning to close the gap with the amount of weight loss following bariatric surgery,” says Dr. W. Timothy Garvey, who led the research. He is an endocrinologist and Butterworth Professor of Medicine in the Department of Nutrition Sciences at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, USA.
Semaglutide, which goes by the brand name Wegovy, works by mimicking a hormone called glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) that targets areas of the brain that regulate appetite and food intake. In the largest placebo-controlled trial of the weight loss medication, individuals who received semaglutide lost 6.2% of their initial body weight compared to those who received placebo.
“Its approval was based on clinical trial results showing that it reduces weight by over 15% on average, when used together with a healthy lifestyle program.
“This amount of weight loss is sufficient to treat or prevent a broad array of obesity complications that impair health and quality of life and is a game changer in obesity medicine.”
