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In a new bid to get insurers to cover a popular weight-loss drug, one of the pharmaceutical companies developing the new treatment is taking an interesting tactic: funding research into whether the drug could also be used to treat other illnesses.
As The Wall Street Journal ReportsEli Lilly, which makes weight-loss and type 2 diabetes drugs Zepbound and Mounjaro, had previously Reluctant to pay We can prove the effectiveness of these drugs by showing that they are effective treatments for sleep apnea.
in Two recent studies In the Lilly-funded study, more than 60 percent of 470 participants reported a reduction in the severity of their sleep apnea when they took Zepbound compared with when they took a placebo. The results were so promising that the Indianapolis-based company submitted them to the Food and Drug Administration as part of an application to formally add sleep apnea as one of the conditions Zepbound treats.
“It builds a wall of evidence,” explained Derek Athey, Lilly’s senior vice president of government strategy and federal accounts, “and helps give us a reason to believe that there’s more to it than just weight loss.”
Drugs such as Zepbound and Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic and Wegovy, known as glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) agonists, not only mimic the gut’s sense of fullness to promote weight loss, but are also gaining recognition for their potential effectiveness in treating other conditions, from alcoholism and dementia to arthritis and Parkinson’s disease.
As anecdotal evidence and studies begin to uncover these off-label uses, the companies that have made billions from them are hoping that regulators will approve them for conditions beyond weight loss and diabetes, which could lead to broader insurance coverage.
Already, some of these efforts are bearing fruit.
In March, the FDA approved Novo’s weight-loss injectable Wegobee for the treatment of heart disease and stroke risk, a move welcomed by doctors who believe the drug can be life-changing.
“Hope,” said Martha Gulati, a cardiologist at Cedars-Sinai Hospital. Interview NPR Earlier this year“Insurance companies will start to understand that this isn’t just a vanity drug.”
But despite all the fuss, it remains unclear whether these seemingly outsized off-label effects are due to the weight loss itself, or to other, as yet undiscovered mechanisms underlying the drug. This question may be difficult to answer, because, despite all the fuss, The medical industry is still not entirely convinced First, let me explain how GLP-1 works.
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