By Maggie Fick, Patrick Wingrove, Elissa Well
LONDON/NEW YORK (Reuters) – Some U.S. patients taking the two highest doses of Novo Nordisk’s weight-loss drug Wegobee face difficulties filling prescriptions, eight doctors across the country say Speaking to Reuters this week, it suggests a new supply challenge for the popular drug.
Weekly injections of Wegovy help patients lose 15% of their weight in tandem with diet and exercise changes. Its high efficacy has created great demand in the United States, where approximately 115 million adults and children are obese.
Walgreens, one of the nation’s largest pharmacies, is facing a supply shortage of high-intensity pharmacies, spokesman Erin Lavaher confirmed.
Novo told Reuters on Friday that there were no supply interruptions for the top doses of 1.7 and 2.4 milligrams, echoing comments made in May when it announced lower-dose restrictions.
The Danish pharmaceutical company announced in May that it would cut the supply of three lower or “starter” doses for several months in a bid to protect current supply to patients in order to address high demand for Wegoby.
Wegovy has five strengths. Patients are expected to reach the top dose of 2.4 mg after 17 weeks of treatment, although some doctors and patients say they are following a slower dosing schedule to reduce side effects.
Doctors in six U.S. states told Reuters that patients were reporting problems filling out high-dose prescriptions. Three of the doctors said delays in supplies at pharmacies have prevented patients from receiving Wegovy injections at regular weekly intervals.
Alicia Shelley, M.D., an internal medicine and obesity specialist at Wellster Health System in Georgia, said she’s heard from more than 20 obese patients since the end of May that their prescriptions for 1.7mg and 2.4mg have been delayed. rice field. .
“Pharmacists tell me they don’t know when the drug will be available,” Shelly said, adding that she has begun switching some patients to less effective weight-loss drugs such as Novo’s Saxenda.
Dr. Robert Kushner, an obesity expert at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, said the delay delayed some patients in the Chicago area from getting vaccinated by as much as four days.
“Patients often have to delay injections because pharmacies have difficulty getting Wegovy in stock,” he said. He added that he didn’t know of any patients who ended up unable to take prescriptions.
“It’s almost like whack-a-mole to see which pharmacies have[supply],” he said.
Patients who received the highest doses of Wegoby and missed their weekly injections were more likely to experience worse-than-usual gastrointestinal side effects, such as vomiting, after the next injection, Kushner said, interviewed for this article. Other doctors have similar concerns.
“It’s a struggle”
Dennis Wells, 57, an auto industry worker in Michigan, started taking Wegobee in February and has lost 40 pounds (18kg) so far. She started on 1.7mg in June and will self-inject on Friday the final dose of her four-month prescription.
After Walgreens failed to fill a prescription for that dose last month, she switched to Amazon pharmacies, but Amazon has yet to ship next month’s supply.
Mr. Wells worries that if he doesn’t get a replacement by the end of next week, he’ll put on weight again.
“You can’t introduce something that’s life-changing and then go, ‘Okay, I’m done with it.’ Make more,” Wells said.
In a statement, Amazon acknowledged that there is a nationwide shortage of some weight-loss drugs. “We are working closely with our suppliers and insurers to address these challenges,” he said.
Six other doctors in Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Detroit, Atlanta and Charlottesville, Virginia, told Reuters they had similar delay complaints from patients with two high doses.
Holly Lofton, Ph.D., an obesity general practitioner at New York University Langone, said doctors were slow to prescribe higher doses of Wegobee because of restrictions the company currently places on the three lower doses. said it may be the cause of
Disha Narang, an endocrinologist at Northwestern Medicine, said up to 10 of the more than 100 patients she sees each month recently reported having problems filling prescriptions, requiring them to delay injections by four to seven days. said it didn’t.
“It’s hard. Patients can’t get Wegovy reliably,” she says.
Wegovy achieved U.S. approval in 2021, but faced supply restrictions soon after launch due to contract manufacturer issues. By the end of last year, this supply problem had eased, and earlier this year, Wegovy usage began to surge again.
According to Barclays Research, the number of prescriptions per week rose from 45,000 in the last week of January to about 135,000 in May, raising fears of a shortage. The total number of prescriptions written in the last three weeks of June fell to about 100,000 per week, down about 25% from before Novo began restricting initial doses.
“Novo really missed the mark in determining the demand for this drug,” Narang said.
(Reported by Maggie Fick in London, Patrick Wingrove and Elissa Well in New York; edited by Caroline Humer and Bill Barclot)
