“It is one of the biggest advances in the obesity and cardiovascular medicine world,” said Nathan Wong, the lead author of the study and director of the Heart Disease Prevention Program at UCI School of Medicine."We now have a weight control therapy that also significantly reduces cardiovascular events beyond the diabetes population where it was originally studied.
Extrapolating from this data, researchers estimated that the decrease in the obese population would reduce cardiovascular disease by a factor of 18%, potentially preventing 1.5 million cardiovascular incidents. The results of the UCI study, however, come on the heels of independent research published earlier this month. The worldwide, multiyear study conducted by the research firm SELECT showed that patients on Wegovy were 20% less likely to experience adverse cardiovascular events, such as strokes or heart attacks.
The Danish pharmaceutical giant has made a splash this year with both of its semaglutide products: Wegovy, approved by the Food and Drug Administration for weight loss at a 2.4 mg dose, and Ozempic, FDA approved for insulin-dependent Type 2 diabetes, with a semaglutide dose ranging between 0.5 mg and 2 mg.