Ozempic and Wegovy maker starts RATIONING weight-loss drugs to cope with demand 

The maker of Ozempic and Wegovy will ration the popular weight-loss drugs to meet demand, it has announced.

Danish drug developer Novo Nordisk said it would have to halve the supply of starting doses of its popular weight-loss drug Wegovy in the US to cope with consumer pressure after reporting predicted results on Thursday.

The weight-loss pills have flown off the shelves in recent years, as many doctors see them as a magic bullet to combat America’s obesity crisis.

Their popularity, combined with production problems, led to months of shortages of both Novo’s Wegovy and its sister drug Ozempic at the start of the year.

Novo said in a statement: “To ensure continuity of care, the supply of the lower Wegovy dose strengths in the US is temporarily reduced.”

Novo has faced supply constraints for its hugely popular Wegovy drug due to overwhelming demand, and has invested heavily in increasing supply.

Sales of Novo’s obesity care products, including Wegovy, were up 124 percent in the first quarter.

More than five million Americans received a prescription for Ozempic in 2022, data shows, compared to 230,000 in 2019.

And the number is only growing, with more than 373,000 prescriptions submitted in the last week of February alone, doubling from the same time last year. Analysts said more than half of these were new.

Chief executive Lars Jorgensen told journalists on Thursday: “We can’t deliver an uptake that just keeps growing, so it’s important to us that we ensure continuity of supply for those patients who have started treatment.”

Initial dose supplies in the US would be reduced by about 50 per cent for ‘several months’, Mr Jorgensen added.

Credit Suisse analysts said they were not surprised by the move given the high demand for the drug.

Last month, the company said a second contract manufacturer would begin production of Wegovy, and on Thursday, Jorgensen said a third manufacturer would begin production later this year.

Jorgensen said he could not give a date when Wegovy would launch in the UK, where the country’s cost-effectiveness watchdog recommended it for use in certain obese people in March.

“We will gradually roll out in International Operations, and UK is part of that. We are not commenting on specific launch dates,” he said.

Novo on Thursday reported earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) of 25 billion Danish kroner ($3.72 billion), above an average analyst forecast of 22.4 billion, according to a Refinitiv poll.

Earlier this month, Novo, the second most valuable company in Europe by market capitalization behind French luxury goods group LVMH, raised its operating profit and full-year sales expectations significantly on strong demand for Wegovy.

Novo on Thursday maintained full-year growth expectations in local currency terms, but said that due to the strength of the Danish krone, revenue and operating profit growth in Danish krone is now expected to be six and nine percentage points lower, respectively.

Shares in Novo Nordisk traded up 4.7 percent at 07:31 GMT, making a minor dent in an increase of more than 140 percent since Wegovy’s US launch in June 2021. The company’s stock is the best performer in Europe.

Ozempic and Wegovy use the same drug, semaglutide, which suppresses appetite and causes weight loss.

The first was approved for type 2 diabetes in 2017. A reformulated version was approved in 2021 under the name Wegovy.

The drug is a GLP-1 receptor, which triggers hormones in the brain that keep the stomach full and tell the body to stop eating and avoid cravings.

The drugs – originally intended for people with diabetes – have exploded in popularity after several celebrities and influencers were rumored to have used them for weight loss, including Kim Kardashian and Elon Musk.

Wegovy has become highly sought after since it first became available in the US last year after demonstrating its ability to reduce a person’s body weight by about 15 percent in 68 weeks in clinical trials.

Texas, Florida, California, New York and Georgia are the states where it’s most common for patients to get a new prescription for the drugs.

Some patients even made DIY slimming injections at home using raw chemicals purchased online.