Jess Battison
It’s the head-to-head we’ve all (apparently) been waiting for.
No, not the 100 men vs. a gorilla, not the SAS soldier vs a US Marine and not Katy Perry vs an alien. I’m talking the head-to-head of Mounjaro and Wegovy.
A weight-loss trial of the two drugs found one clear winner.
In case you’re not totally clued up, Wegovy is just a different brand name for the active ingredient semaglutide that Ozempic also has.
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Typically, these drugs, including Mounjaro, are designed for treating people with Type-2 Diabetes. But it has become more and more common for the injectables to be used for weight loss treatment.
Unlike Ozempic though, Wegovy is available on the NHS for this use, just like Mounjaro is. And this new trial has looked at the effectiveness of each.
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The multi-dose injectable pens are self-administered by patients once a week.
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Both Mounjaro and Wegovy are GLP-1 receptor agonists. GLP-1 is usually released after eating, sending a signal to your brain that you’re full up and delaying the emptying of your stomach.
The treatments contain an active ingredient that mimics this and therefore helps you to feel full and eat less.
Wegovy as semaglutide mimics a hormone released by the body after a meal to flip one appetite switch in the brain whereas Mounjaro, a tirzepatide, flips two.
The trial was paid for by Eli Lilly, the manufacturer of Mounjaro and involved 750 obese people with an average weight of 113kg.
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Over 72 weeks of treatment, participants were asked to take the highest dose they could tolerate of the two drugs.
Presented at the European Congress on Obesity in Malaga and in the New England Journal of Medicine, the trial found that Mounjaro is more effective than its rival.
That’s as 32 percent of people lost a quarter of their body weight on it compared to 16 percent on Wegovy.
Plus, on Mounjaro, participants lost an average of 18cm from their waistlines compared to 13cm on the other treatment.
While both had similar levels of side effects from the drugs, those on Mounjaro were found to have better blood pressure, blood sugar and cholesterol levels.
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Dr Louis Aronne, who conducted the trial said: "The majority of people with obesity will do just fine with semaglatide (Wegovy), those at the higher end may ultimately do better with tirzepatide (Mounjaro)."
A spokesperson for Novo Nordisk (the manufacturers of Wegovy) told LADbible in a statement: "This study compared the maximum tolerated dose of tirzepatide, a dual GIP and GLP-1 receptor agonist at 10mg and 15 mg, to semaglutide, a GLP-1 receptor agonist at 1.7mg and 2.4mg. 2.4mg is currently the highest approved dose for Wegovy® ▼ (semaglutide injection).
"In this study the amount of weight loss shown for Wegovy® was lower than the amount showed in Novo Nordisk’s registry studies for the medicine, so we are not certain about the study’s methodology.
"We believe that treating obesity is about more than just a number on a scale and Wegovy® is the only GLP-1 obesity medication approved to prevent major cardiovascular events such as cardiovascular death, heart attack, and stroke and thereby potentially save and prolong lives."