‘Holy grail’ weight loss pill moves closer to NHS after staggering human trial results
Weight loss drugs seem to be on the up and up at the moment, with all sorts of options available and plenty of people giving them a try.
Mounjaro and Wegovy are the two biggest ones out there at the moment, at least among those actually approved for the purposes of weight loss, and they're both available on the NHS to people who meet a certain criteria.
There's also Ozempic, likely to be the most popular and recognisable name of them all, though this is not one of the jabs prescribed for weight loss and is meant to be for Type-2 diabetes.
These injections all do similar things - you jab yourself with it semi-regularly, and it helps suppress your appetite, meaning you don't feel anywhere near as hungry and are likely to end up eating less.
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Of course, like all drugs, they're not without side effects, but for most people the boost to health from weight loss makes them a major net positive.
However, there may soon be a new drug on the block to compete with them as Eli Lilly, the company that makes Mounjaro, has announced the results of their human trials for a weight loss pill.
The weight loss pill is called 'orforglipron', a name which doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, but their tests found that people were losing on average 12.4 percent of their body weight after a period of 72 weeks, or 27lbs for the average person on the trial.
They had been hoping for 15 percent weight loss but it's still pretty close and now they want to get orforglipron some international approval so it can be prescribed and rolled out to people who need it.
Kenneth Custer of Eli Lilly explained: "With these positive data in hand, we are now planning to submit orforglipron for regulatory review by year end and are prepared for a global launch to address this urgent public health need."
So it sounds like they're eager to get it rolled out sooner rather than later, meaning that if it ever becomes available on the NHS the same principle will apply.
According to The Times, a weight loss pill is the 'holy grail' because they're expected to be cheaper to make and easier to take than the injections, since people on it wouldn't need to poke themselves with a needle on a regular basis, which means more people could be taking them and seeing positive results.
It's a balancing act as the results from the human trial of the weight loss pill showed that it didn't help people shed as much of their proportional body weight as Mounjaro or Wegovy, over the same period of time an average person would shed 20.2 percent and 13.7 percent of their body weight respectively.
However, that could also mean that the side effects people feel from the weight loss jabs aren't as pronounced in pill form which may be a benefit for the comfort of the people taking it.
Plenty on the jabs have experienced discomforting side effects, so if those were reduced and coupled with the pill form being easier to take then orforglipron really could be the next big thing.
Dr Simon Cork of Angela Ruskin University suggested that since orforglipron is a pill rather than a jab the cost of making it would probably be 'significantly lower'.
He said: "It should be noted that their effects on weight loss are not as profound as that seen in injectable GLP-1 receptor agonists, such as Wegovy, with a lower percentage weight loss and fewer people achieving 10% weight loss at the highest dose.
"Nevertheless, that this medication is an oral form, rather than injectable, will likely be seen as more tolerable for many patients. The manufacturing costs are also anticipated to be significantly lower than injectable drugs, meaning these medications may be more equitable in their availability.
"It should be noted that these are preliminary, non-peer reviewed results and we will need to see the full trial methodology and data before a more comprehensive analysis can be undertaken."
Joe Harker