What the results of Wegovy’s longest clinical trial yet show about weight loss, side effects and heart protection

New analyses of the longest clinical trial yet of the weight-loss drug Wegovy are shedding light on how quickly it helps people lose weight, how long they sustain that weight loss and how safe the medicine is over four years of use.

New analyses of the longest clinical trial yet of the weight-loss drug Wegovy are shedding light on how quickly it helps people lose weight, how long they sustain that weight loss and how safe the medicine is over four years of use. The analyses – of a trial called Select, whose results showed last year that Wegovy significantly reduced heart risk in addition to helping with weight loss – also suggest that the drug may protect the heart in ways beyond weight loss alone, researchers said, raising new questions about how the wildly popular medicines in this drug class should be used – and covered by insurers. “The implications are profound,” said Dr. Harlan Krumholz, a cardiologist and scientist at Yale University and Yale New Haven Hospital who was not involved in the research, noting that a second study this week showed a similar finding for heart failure. “We have not encountered a drug with such a breadth of heart benefits.” More than 25,000 people in the US are starting Wegovy every week, drugmaker Novo Nordisk said this month. And in a KFF poll released Friday, 6% of respondents said they were currently using a drug in this class, known as GLP-1 receptor agonists. That translates to more than 15 million Americans. One important question about these blockbuster medicines is how widely – and how long – they’ve been studied. The Select trial, which was funded by Novo Nordisk, showed last year that Wegovy reduced the risk of a heart attack, stroke or heart-related death by 20% in people with existing cardiovascular risk with obesity or who are overweight. It included more than 17,600 people from 41 countries between 2018 and 2021 and followed them for several years. Researchers have continued to mine the data, and the new analyses, presented Monday at the European Congress on Obesity and published in the journal Nature Medicine, show results for people taking Wegovy as long as four years. Here are some major takeaways: