Earlier this year, my friend Yasmin Tayag he wrote that Ozempic-a diabetes drug that has become a cultural phenomenon in the use of prescriptions for weight loss-was about to become a story of the past. He was right.
Over the past few days, presentations at the American Diabetes Association meeting in San Diego have provided a number of things to show The Ozempic Age it’s already over. Taking it in stride: a class of better obesity treatments. A new, oral form of semaglutide they work like Ozempic or Wegovy, which are similar types of recording; so is another pill that contains a medicine called orforglipron. The new data also shows that the shots are tirzepatide or survodutide it can end work good than semaglutide, and that compound is called retatrutide and maybe above all, which is approaching bariatric surgery. I won’t even bore you with stories about pemvidutide, lotiglipronand danuglipron!
In other words, Ozempic and old news, and sooner than we think. These drugs will still be widely used, but the amazing drugs for obesity are progressing, and in the coming years, they will have many ways to confuse patients: Some drugs may be cheaper or easier than others; some may be strong; others may have minimal adverse effects or consistent benefits across populations. This only makes it more confusing, although the drug Ozempic has started to disappear, the name Ozempic, as a shorthand for the group of drugs, seems to be there.
For months now, the term has been used as a common term, along the lines of Band Aid, escalatorand thermos: a specific type that is converted using a normal to type. Consider all topics related to innovation”Ozempic tablets,” the coming of “Medicines like Ozempic,” or “Nature Ozempic.” See the Ozempic epidemic report faceOzempic fingerOzempic explosionOzempic buttocks. This would be better if the products were more similar, like Kleenex facial tissues are more similar to Puffs. But they are not, and some pretense may have a price.
It is true that all these drugs are similar in principle. Reports from San Diego describe drugs that have one common feature: Each activates a receptor for a hormone called. GLP-1, which suppresses appetite and causes insulin to be released (among other physiological effects). Liraglutide was the first such drug to be approved as a treatment for obesity, and has been available for use since 2014. Another drug that hits the same receptor, dulaglutide, has also been found to treat diabetes over the years. Semaglutide arrived a few years later, first as a shot for diabetes (Ozempic), then in pill form (Rybelsus), and finally as a high-dose injection approved for obesity (Wegovy). Most drugs of this type but made from small molecules (ie cheap to make) are in the process, including two of the new “Ozempic” tablets, orforglipron and danuglipron. Any of these drugs that target GLP-1 can suppress your appetite, leading to weight loss. Some of them can give you nausea, stomach pain, and diarrhea. In that sense, both are Ozemp-no. But it’s not Ozempic.
Other drugs squeezed under the Ozempic umbrella do other things. Mounjaro contains tirzepatide, which activates the GLP-1 receptor like all other drugs and another hormone receptor called GIP. Survodutide, one of the drugs prescribed over the weekend in San Diego, targets GLP-1 and glucagon receptors. Retatrutide, maybe it is very promising obesity drugs in the pipeline, activate GLP-1, GIP, and glucagon receptors. Does this drug affect the same broad system called incretin hormones like Ozempic? Sure. Does it lead to weight loss? Very much. Will it upset your stomach to the point of discomfort? Where. But they are not like the Ozempic brothers more than their cousins.
“These drugs have different properties,” Fatima Cody Stanford, an obesity doctor at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, told me. “They have different ways of doing things.” Semaglutide reduces glucagon secretion, for example, while tirzepatide’s effect on glucagon appears to be moderated. both sides. Stanford says that the latter drug does a lot to change the amount of cholesterol in the body. Over time, such differences will help determine how these new drugs work together to define the future of obesity treatment. Ideally, patients and their doctors discuss the pros and cons of each.
Trademark lawyers have a silly name for a brand to become synonymous with a product group, like when Kleenex became the popular word for tissues: They call it. genericide. Lawyers like to see this phenomenon through words a dangerous frame of lost IP – a brand name of billions of dollars in smoke. Marketing experts can see it from the other side, as a positive sign that the brand name has benefited control the market completely. With Ozempic, however, the label is stretched so far that it is misleading. Imagine if Kleenex wasn’t just a brand name for facial tissue, but one snot-sucking vacuum tubes and hands tools to break the boogers. Any confusion that occurs is borne by the buyer. “It creates false expectations,” says Ted Kyle, a pharmacist and expert weight-loss plan consultant who is at the conference in San Diego. It works against the patient’s wishes.
“We can’t do this with other diseases,” Stanford said. If Ozempic was a type of cancer immunotherapy and not a diabetes and obesity drug, we wouldn’t be able to call it generic, he said: “We wouldn’t say, ‘Oh, look, there’s another treatment for Ozempic. cancer.'” The problem is not being ignored—because the pills that are being discussed are the “Ozempic pill” or “Ozempic-like” pills that are trying to make us think about obesity. “It’s another way to lose weight,” he said. It leaves us stuck in the old, outdated thinking where the details have been changed: Eat less and exercise, and maybe take some weight loss pills until you feel better.
There is, of course, some virtue in simplicity. I mentioned 10 different drugs in this article and I could name half of them. (Just try saying it orforglipron. It sounds like an onomatopoeia due to the effects of orforglipron.) But in the Ozempic era, mentioning anything Ozempic makes the problem twice as bad. It promotes obesity while producing addictive drugs. It gives a bottle full of magic pills but doesn’t say which one.