Half of US Adults Could Be Prescribed Ozempic, But at What Cost?

United States: A new analysis found that over half of America’s adults, a total of some 137 million adults, could be candidates for the hit GLP-1 drug, semaglutide.

The drug is marketed as Ozempic for managing diabetes and Wegovy to promote weight loss, or it could be indicated for the two conditions or reduce chances of heart disease, according to a team that includes Dr. Dhruv Kazi of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.

About the drug

The medicines are made by Novo Nordisk and run almost a thousand dollars a month, so it is also unclear who will be writing all those tens of millions of prescriptions, US News reported.

Currently, insurance providers, in general, only cover the cost of semaglutide provided a doctor prescribes it for type 2 diabetes.

The numbers come from a large health survey conducted by the United States federal government in 2015 and early 2020.

Among a cohort of more than 25,500 adults, the team calculated the total number of people who either:

• had diabetes
• had a BMI of at least 30 percent (obese).
• were obese (BMI of 27 or over) with a disease like high cholesterol or high blood pressure
• were over forty and five, respectively, as well as included individuals considered at high risk for heart diseases.

What more has the analysis found?

The researchers added that all four patient categories might benefit from semaglutide.

They estimated that 8,504 of the adults in the database – or 136.8 million for the entire population of the United States – fit into at least one of the four categories.

That’s much greater than today’s 82 million Americans who are eligible for the medication most commonly prescribed at present – cholesterol-lowering statistical drugs.

Men and women were almost equally eligible for semaglutide treatment, and the average patient was 50 plus, the authors of the study added.

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